To understand the remarkable success of the tiny island city-state of Singapore (250 square miles, 4.1 million people, annual per capita income $24,150), one really need look no farther than Philip Yeo, one of the republic’s true pioneers.

Literally reshaping his homeland, Yeo has masterminded highly visible undertakings such as the $4 billion Jurong Island complex, in which seven offshore islands were linked with imported landfill to form a huge new industrial area for land-strapped Singapore. Less apparent, but no less crucial, are the research institutes he has nurtured. Their intellectual output has resulted in commercial products manufactured in a number of domestic and overseas industrial parks, also championed by Yeo. He, as much as anyone, has fostered the country’s knowledge-based economy and set its future course. “The key for Singapore,” emphasizes the affable, down-to-earth Yeo, “is developing human capital, because the country is so small and resource-scarce.”

A scholarship student at the University of Toronto, Yeo received a degree in industrial engineering in 1970 and then returned home where he earned a master’s in systems engineering while working in the Ministry of Defense. “I enjoyed public service so much,” he says, “that thirty years later, I’m still at it!” After graduating from HBS, and after more years of service at the Defense Ministry, Yeo was named chairman of Singapore’s Economic Development Board (SEDB) in 1986. Currently SEDB’s cochairman, he also serves as chairman of Singapore’s National Science & Technology Board. In addition, he has played an active leadership role over the last two decades as a chairman and board member in some of Singapore’s largest and most influential companies. As head of SEDB, Yeo (who had previously overseen the computerization of Singapore while chairman of the country’s National Computer Board) has redirected the country’s economy into growth industries such as semiconductors, aerospace, and specialty chemicals. Now he’s positioning Singapore to excel at what he believes is the next big thing: life sciences and bioengineering. “In the next generation, we will know the genetic and molecular mechanisms of disease,” Yeo declares. “Biomedical science will control and eradicate cancer and AIDS, and individualized medicine will be the norm.”

While to most observers Yeo seems part human dynamo, part force of nature, he describes himself simply as an “organizer by instinct.” As a high-school student, for example, he rallied his classmates to raise money to build a private chemistry lab — the lab at school had limited hours —by showing rented movies to neighborhood kids. One year later, the fully equipped facility, set up in the attic of an unsuspecting aunt, was nothing less than “the best money could buy,” Yeo proudly recalls.

That passion for education, for himself and Singapore’s people, still burns. Seeking a cram course in life sciences, Yeo has found that university classroom hours are too limited for his schedule. His proposed solution? Run universities like factories, with classes available 24/7. “I would love to take charge of a university and change it,” chuckles Yeo, “but no one has been brave enough to offer me the opportunity!”