WHEN he was only 12 years old, Mr Yong Choon was already making headlines in his hometown of Kuching in Sarawak, East Malaysia, for his creative - and sometimes explosive - ideas.
The precocious inventor concocted a bomb that accidentally detonated and blew up parts of his family home, including the furniture.
'I was the talk of the town for quite a while. It was so embarrassing, but at least I knew that the bomb worked,' the unassuming 61-year-old said sheepishly.
Five decades later, Mr Yong is once again in the news - this time for creating Nutek, a Singapore-based production systems manufacturing company that bagged three awards under the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) Growth Excellence Series this year.
Nutek, which has an annual turnover of over $40 million, won accolades for achieving outstanding growth in turnover and net profit. It also received an award as the 'top internationalising SME'.
The programme, organised by DP Information Group and HSBC, honours low-key, 'unsung heroes' in the SME sector.
Nutek is an SME that has kept a low profile in Singapore since its incorporation 18 years ago.
But it is a relatively well- known brand name abroad, as it supplies high-tech equipment to electronics giants such as Seagate, ST Microelectronics and Huawei. It has offices in six countries.
The company was 'international from Day One', selling and exhibiting machines in the United States, Europe and across Asia as part of its 'tripod strategy', said Mr Yong.
Nutek also specialises in higher-tech machines, which command better margins.
One may say Nutek's hallmark of global diversification and technology originates from Mr Yong's own experiences as a young engineer-turned-entrepreneur.
The home-made bomb blast failed to douse his enthusiasm for 'taking apart everything and anything and putting them back again'.
'I was the fifth kid in a family of eight children and, perhaps, the most mischievous.
'I would devise strategies to ally with some of my siblings against the others when we fought. It was like the Romance Of The Three Kingdoms,' joked Mr Yong, referring to a tumultuous era of power struggles in China in the 2nd century AD.
Little wonder then that logic subjects, such as mathematics and physics, came naturally to the irrepressibly curious son of two Chinese school teachers.
'I liked logic subjects because I didn't need to study for the exams.
'I would do experiments or play basketball in the morning, and then take the exam in the afternoon,' recalled Mr Yong.
At 18, he clinched a Colombo Plan Scholarship to study engineering at the University of Tasmania. There, he was exposed to an international crowd and learnt to interact with people of different cultures.
After graduation, though, Mr Yong went through a less positive cultural experience.
He spent 'two frustrating years' in Kuala Lumpur, as the Malaysian government's bumiputera policy of giving Malays priority for top jobs over other races left him languishing in 'unexciting jobs'.
That pushed him to move to Singapore, where he worked for six years as an electrical engineer at a quintessentially transnational company - General Electric (GE).
So, when Mr Yong set up a general assembly business in 1980 together with a few GE colleagues, he was already aware of the need to tap international markets and new technologies to expand a business.
As the company's tech whiz, he devised ways of assembling components for multinational companies, as well as local SMEs.
Eight years after setting up his first company, Mr Yong sniffed a lucrative opportunity in Singapore's electronics sector, which was starting to flourish in the mid-1980s.
He struck out on his own at age 43, and Nutek was incorporated in 1989 - the same year his first daughter was born.
'My wife took care of the baby at home, I took care of the baby business,' said the father of three teenagers - two daughters and a son.
'It was madness in the early years. I hardly slept, and my brain worked around the clock. I would wake up at 3am, having dreamt of a solution to some technical problem.'
Mr Yong's diversification strategy was once again key to Nutek's survival in 2001, when the US economy tanked after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks.
At the time, Nutek had just acquired a new $12 million building at Joo Koon Circle in anticipation of raising funds for a listing on the Singapore Exchange.
'We got approval for a listing just before Sept 11, but business from the US dropped to zero, and even Europe had weaker sales,' recalled Mr Yong.
'But fortunately, the China market started to pick up. Asia makes up 55 per cent of our revenues today.'
Nutek shelved its listing plans, as it had enough reserves to finance its expansion, and rode the China growth wave to double its revenues over the next five years.
The company has not let up on diversifying into new technology markets either.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong cited it last year in his Budget speech for using its in-house engineering expertise to help Rolls- Royce build cutting-edge fuel cells.
Mr Yong oversees the project but has entrusted the groundwork to the 'younger talent' he has recruited.
This reflects his hands-off style of management for Nutek's 300-odd employees worldwide: 'Let the staff do the jobs, and often they will surprise you with how well they do.'
These days, Mr Yong is busy tinkering with his newest invention - the Eubiq Powertrack, an ingenious power outlet system that is quickly displacing the 100-
year-old conventional power sockets across the globe.
'It's my new bomb. It took three years to design and build, and now it's about to explode worldwide,' he enthused.
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'My wife took care of the baby at home, I took care of the baby business... I hardly slept, and my brain worked around the clock. I would wake up at 3am, having dreamt of a solution to some technical problem.'
MR YONG, on how it was like to start his own company from scratch
