Shadowing-Übung: Talent strategy for Vietnam's innovationi economy with Edward Lim | Vietnam Today - Englisch Sprechen Lernen mit Video

Around the world, countries are investing billions in artificial intelligence, semiconductors and other strategic technologies.

But increasingly, the real competition isn't just for investment, it's for talent.

Vietnam has emerged as one of Southeast Asia's fastest growing innovation ecosystems, backed by a young workforce,

a growing pool of engineers and ambitious digital transformation goals.

The question now is whether the country can develop and keep the talents needed to compete in tomorrow's technology economy.

To understand where Vietnam stands today, let's first take a closer look at the country's innovation ecosystem.

Vietnam's high income and high tech ambitions are closely intertwined.

The country aims to move up the semiconductor value chain, become a top three ASEAN nation in AI capacity.

But technology alone will not deliver these goals.

The World Bank says Vietnam needs a major expansion of its

tech talent from more STEM graduates to PhD level researchers and experts who can turn research into market-ready products.

That means stronger R&D and closer links between universities, businesses and government.

The challenge now is to turn Vietnam's growing talent base into

the innovation capacity needed to compete higher up the global value chain.

To better understand what it takes to build an innovation-driven economy, our reporter Hoang Hằng spoke with Edward Lim, country director of Lock 71 Vietnam,

part of the National University of Singapore's Global Innovation Network.

His work focuses on connecting entrepreneurs,

universities, investors and businesses to to strengthen innovation ecosystems across Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

Let's take a look.

First of all, thank you so much for joining our BizLine program.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Han.

The Vietnam innovation ecosystem has made remarkable progress over the past decade, supported by digital transformation, government initiatives,

and also growing private investment.

So from where you sit, what has changed the most and what is still missing for Vietnam to become a truly innovation-driven economy?

From what I observe, what has changed is really that innovation has not just become a startup story,

but it has changed to become a national strategy.

And what's behind all of this really is Resolution 57.

and from what I see it is a game changer because it is chaired personally by the General Secretary

so it is coming right from the top.

So there is very strong political will to push for innovation and breakthroughs in science and technology.

That said, there's also a lot of things to be done

One of the key areas that I see that can be improved is actually the translation layer.

Because there are inventions that are being carried out in our Vietnamese universities.

However, at the same time, there is a very big market in Vietnam as well and around the region.

So how do you translate this research into the market? market.

Now as country compete for the world's best tech talent,

Vietnam is increasingly recognised for its young workforce and strong engineering base.

So what makes Vietnamese talent stand out in the eyes of global technology companies?

Vietnamese tech talent is very hungry and they are really, really very good at what they do.

So the intellectual capacity from what we see is really strong.

and this is based on PISA scores that we see.

And even in the latest math Olympiad, it's an international competition.

Vietnam emerged as one of the very, very highly ranked teams, and the world can see this.

However, what I can see that is also changing

is that I think Vietnamese tech talent not only want to bring in solutions from other countries and work on them,

but also are beginning to want to create their own solutions and deploy them to many countries.

Now, developing talent starts well before people enter the workforce.

So how can universities move beyond producing graduates to become engines of research, innovation and entrepreneurship?

I think mindset is really the core of it.

Scientific discoveries, it comes out of novelty.

It comes out of deep research into certain fields.

That said, certain scientific research that comes out is very novel but may not solve a particular pressing problem.

So therefore, how do we get some of this research to be deployed

or even commercialised into market and

that actually takes a mindset shift to talk to the researchers and the professors in the university.

That's the first point.

Second is on infrastructure.

Good infrastructure has to be deliberately built over time.

For NUS itself, actually we have started more than 20 years ago.

One key example that we, a program that we've been running is called the NUS Overseas College.

And we started that in 2002.

We sent students to Silicon Valley to get them exposed to a different market for startups.

And from there, many of these students came to start companies.

And one of them is even a unicorn right now called Carousel.

So things are built deliberately over time.

how we do IP licensing, tech transfer, training program, using masters, setting up block 71 over the world so all this takes time.

The last point really is about incentives.

Here the government and corporate plays an important role together with the universities where government provides direction and incentives,

corporates provide direction in terms of what the workforce needs and

and then the universities can then adjust accordingly to produce the type of graduates that we need.

Now, attracting talent is only half the problem.

How can Vietnam retain its brightest minds while attracting global expertise and overseas Vietnamese talent to contribute to its innovation economy?

Attraction is definitely there because we do see a wave of experts overseas Vietnamese or just foreign talent coming to Vietnam.

I myself, I'm in Vietnam.

It's a very, very exciting place because we are in the stage of building.

This is the golden era.

And I think people want to come here and be part of the growth story.

And that is really what is exciting.

What can be worked on further is also facilitation of some of the regulations

when it comes to foreigners coming into Vietnam to work.

In terms of incentives when it comes to things like the work passes or visa.

One example that Singapore has actually deployed is a kind of tech pass to attract investors

and also top startup founders from around the world to come to Singapore to work.

And for Vietnam as well, I do see a lot of changes that are happening,

laws that are being passed to make it easier for foreigners and also overseas Vietnamese to come back to Vietnam.

And I think, for example, the Vietnam IFC, the International Financial Centre, has its own set of regulations,

rules and facilitation incentives to bring in foreign experts in the financial sector to work in the IFC.

IFC so that is a very good example as well.

Successful innovation ecosystem rely on strong collaboration between universities, corporations, investors and government.

Looking at Vietnam today, where do you see the strongest partnership emerging and what gaps still need to be addressed?

The strongest partnerships are the ones that we see partners that are coming in in very good faith

and really wanting to produce concrete changes.

Our recent partnerships with Vietnamese institutions,

PTIT, Post Telecommunications, Institute of Technology, as well as Phan Lang University.

These are very concrete collaborations that we are having and we are moving really fast, very quickly.

From conversation to actual tangible projects that are being deployed.

Together with them, we are working on exciting things like accelerator programs to bring in Japanese startups,

Singapore startups into the Vietnam market.

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So what I really hope to see is that every time we sign agreements or MOUs,

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it has to be translated into tangible projects.

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In our new program, we are expected to also work with Singapore companies in the consumer

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and retail value chain to see how we can attract Vietnamese startups, Japanese startups, Singapore startups to solve problems,

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that the problem statements in the digital value chain here in Vietnam

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so that they can adopt and scale further in this Vietnamese market.

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Singapore has built a highly international technology and startup ecosystem.

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So what lessons can Vietnam learn from Singapore?

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I would say the first point is consistency.

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Consistency is about doing small but boring things the same way every day.

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And we have been quietly doing that over the decades.

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So people ask what is the secret sauce?

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Actually, even our minister, Minister Chan Chun Sing, he himself said that there's no secret sauce

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because the true success is about the small little things that we put our hearts and minds to do every single day.

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Secondly is regulatory clarity.

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If companies and innovators have a clear set of rules that they are familiar with,

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there's a lot more certainty.

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They know how to predict, they know how to navigate the system.

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Thirdly is of course the capital markets, right, because Singapore has now become a very strong capital market,

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right, it's very liquid and that also means it's easier for people to fundraise and to look for more opportunities.

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So these are the three areas that I would say makes Singapore where it is today.

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And Vietnam has its own set of strengths as well, so we can always complement each other.

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Looking ahead if Vietnam gets the talent and innovation ecosystem right,

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where do you see the country fitting into the global technology landscape over the next decade?

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Vietnam could potentially play a huge role in the innovation ecosystem and for me I think that's where software can meet hardware.

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One wave that we are seeing right now the next bound of AI is actually something called embodied AI,

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physical AI, because this is harder to train.

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How do you train an AI to understand and recognize physical space

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or even things like physical sensory touch or even taste

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and this is something that Vietnam could play a huge role

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because there's a huge manufacturing base here so manufacturing is also about hardware

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and at the same time we talk about tech talent here in Vietnam

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so that's where software is the leadership has talking has been talking a lot about technology diplomacy

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and that's where from my observation Singapore partners like Singapore

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and Japan Korea are very very interested to work with Vietnam

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on this right Japan has very good technologies Singapore has deep capital markets so if we could

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blend and complement the strengths of all these different partners, it will really create a very strong ecosystem here in Asia.

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And definitely Vietnam gets to play a very critical role in all of this.

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And I think tremendous progress will be made in the next five years because of the political will to do so.

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And we see that as a very important factor, right? push has to come from the top.

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Companies are now very willing to also ride on this momentum and work with the government.

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We talk a lot about partnerships.

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So with all of these things in play, what we could see is within the next five to ten years, breakthroughs will happen in this space.

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Once again, thank you so much for being here with us.

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Thank you.

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Thank you so much.

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Shadowing-Übung: Talent strategy for Vietnam's innovationi economy with Edward Lim | Vietnam Today - Englisch Sprechen Lernen mit Video

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