Innovation is a topic close to my heart. I’ve known, seen or met Malaysians who are innovators and are doing great work outside of Malaysia. I often wonder why they don’t do it here instead and I’ve been told that this country hasn’t encouraged innovation. There are no tax breaks or government support for R&D.
When I was invited to attend MSC’s 12th International Advisory Panel (IAP) Learning Symposium earlier this week, I was excited. The theme for this year was on innovation. Will we finally see the government doing something to promote innovation in Malaysia?
There were two half day tracks running simultaneously. Each track had a panel of speakers with solid track records and experience in driving innovation in education or in business. These gentlemen were also brought together by MSC to be on the advisory board to influence policies that could help the country reach its goals.
The business track, which I attended had on the panel Datuk Seri Dr. Maximus Johnity Ongkili, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation (I only just found out that we now have a minister of innovation); Dr. Ya-Qin Zhang, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Corporation and President of Microsoft China Research; Christopher Forbes, Vice Chairman of Forbes Publishing Co.; and Dr. John Gage, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, also formerly of Sun Microsystems.
For a detailed account on what each speaker talked about, head over to Hillary Chan’s write up on CNET Asia. Hillary highlighted an interesting observation. There wasn’t a single Malaysian on that panel. Oh wait, they are all in jail according to Datuk Ongkili. I also noticed there wasn’t a single woman on that panel. Is there no room for women in a knowledge-based economy?
To me, the panelist did not tackle the challenges ahead as clearly as I thought they would. With all due respect, Dr. Zhang presented Microsoft’s roadmap and stressed on their $3 billion R&D commitment outside of the US with a list of cities where research centers are set up. Malaysia is not on that list and there are no short, medium or long term plans to include this country in that roadmap. Datuk Ongkili believes Malaysia isn’t lacking innovators and a lot of them are in prison. With that kind of statistics, we should maybe refocus on prison sourcing next year? Chris Forbes (funny guy, I like him) thinks taking a printed magazine online is innovation but it’s not, that’s evolution. The New York Times is innovating printed news delivery online. Finally we have John Gage (I like him too) who talked about innovating to bring more happiness to the world. People want to buy happy. I like where Gage was heading with that idea. Even if I’m jobless, I guess I would like to be happily jobless. Gage paints a utopia that technology can play a part to bridge the gap but again, little to hold on to as to how we can get from zero to hero.
I was hoping to hear more concrete plans or plans with more common sense. A gentleman I spoke to after the conference told me how Malaysian innovators are not being heard. Instead of an online repository for ideas like myideas.my how about a forum for innovators to post their feedback and opinions? Is the government even interested to hear and fix their pain points? How does an international advisory panel know what to fix or how to help? There is also a lack of recognition for innovation. Could the media have offered some help with a regular column or TV program highlighting innovation in Malaysia? How about an annual Innovation Award?
How about improving our broadband infrastructure? The price companies have to pay for larger pipes is incredible. Surely faster speeds can work in tandem with the government’s efforts in increasing broadband penetration in the country. Why must everyone wait for penetration to reach its target before we can see faster connections? People are increasingly mobile – John Gage also mentioned this. Can the government encourage telcos to eliminate the 2-3GB caps on mobile data plans? This cap does not help knowledge workers one bit.
So the people have been asked to innovate and pick up speed to compete with the world but is anything being done about the speed bumps all over this roadmap (or lack of one) to an innovation and knowledge-based economy?
