A Vietnam National Innovation Summit, an event on the sideline of the 2006 Vietnam APEC Summit, was recently held in Hanoi by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), IBM and other relevant agencies and ministries. The summit was considered as the beginning for series of concrete activities to boosts innovation in Vietnam, especially within the local business community. At the event, experiences and lessons of foreign countries were shared.
Many innovation programmes from around the world
Enterprises and governments of countries are seeking solutions to improve the competitiveness, expand industries, create more jobs and increase their reach to the world. Now, they have become aware that innovation is the key. In December 2004, the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry published an important research work entitled ‘Competing in the global economy: the innovation challenge.’ At the same time, the German Government launched an initiative ‘Partners for Innovation.’ In the US, the Competition Committee launched the Initiative year for national innovation.
In APEC, Australia has developed and carried out the programme “Capacity building Australia 2,’ the Republic of Korea announced a comprehensive strategy for innovation and set up an office for innovation in science and technology, Malaysia has appointed a minister in charge of innovation. In particular, Thailand, to cope with four major challenges including intellectual property, global market, finance and technological change, approved ‘The Five “I”’ programme, with Intelligence, Integration, Intellectual Property, Investment, and Infrastructure. To implement the strategy, the National Innovation Agency (NIA) was established in 2003.
Innovation promotion in Vietnam
Hoang Van Phong, minister of science and technology, said the Ministry of Science and Technology had paid great attention to boosting co-operation with ministries, localities and the business community to take measures to promote the application and transfer of technology. The Vietnamese Government has allowed the ministry to set up the Department of Technology Application and Development to accelerate the bringing of technology and management skills to enterprises and economic sectors to create commodity value to meet the market demand.
Talking about innovation capacity building for Vietnamese enterprises, Nguyen Thu Ha, deputy general director of the Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam, said there were five factors enterprise leaders should paid attention to. These include enterprise’s development strategy, orientations for innovation activities of enterprises, the creation of an environment for innovation and innovation encouragement, innovation selection, and turning innovation into reality.
The opinion of IBM was that in a country such as Vietnam, separated strategies on promotion of innovation would not be as effective as the promotion of co-operation with other countries in other regions with abundant resources in the world. Therefore, the Vietnamese Government should exert further efforts to remove trade and investment barriers, creating a favourable environment for foreign investors, taking advantage of scientific and technological achievements in the world, observing the standards for open technologies.
A national innovation as a foundation for Vietnam may successfully achieve the targets. Stephen W. Braim, governmental programmes executive, IBM Asia Pacific, said that to implement a national innovation strategy, leadership and investment commitments were required with the implementation of three steps including the development of specialised force for national innovation, the building of a national centre of innovation role models and programme for evaluating the readiness of innovation programmes.
Kern said that Vietnam should promote innovation as a way for its strong development. Vietnam has many advantages for promoting innovation, such as high education, strategic geographic location, competitive price structure, young population and creative ability.
Nguyen Thoa
Vietnamese
