Achieving human well-being and security (HWS) requires tackling multiple challenges central to sustainable and equitable human development, including mitigating the ill-effects of globalisation, dealing with climate change and the health of the planet as a whole, developing effective and relevant technologies through a robust research endeavour, delivering quality healthcare and education, alleviating poverty and inequity, ensuring international cooperation and goodwill, and building effective global institutions which provide strong governance. To help tackle these challenges, the National University of Singapore and the National University Health System convened the inaugural Raffles Dialogue in 2015 as a gathering of global thought- and opinion-leaders to review the state of human well-being and security (HWS), a key concern facing all countries, rich and poor alike. We hope to build on the outcome of the first Dialogue to develop future dialogues which will analyse and debate a spectrum of HWS issues of concern to all nations, especially those in the Asia-Pacific region. To this end the second Dialogue will have the overall theme of ‘Human Well-being and Security in 2030: The Critical Role of Innovation’.