KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 30 — An innovation-led and productivity-driven economy demands a new breed of SMEs that can help foster market and technology-driven innovations to create more high-skilled jobs in all economic sectors and increase a country’s GDP.
In recent years, the need for innovation has not reduced — in fact, it is greater than ever before. Growth is a central government priority, and innovation is an undisputable key enabler for growth.
No one understands this better than the driving force of the nation’s leader entrusted with SME development, Datuk Hafsah Hashim, Chief Executive Officer of SME Corporation Malaysia. The leadership and commitment shown by this highly respectable icon over the years is undoubtedly an asset to the nation. Her name has been synonymous with SME Corporation Malaysia and the SME Masterplan.
Under the SME Masterplan 2012-2020, catalysing growth and income for the innovation-led and productivity-driven economy has become the new age mantra.
The SME Masterplan takes new and pragmatic approaches in SME development which are outcome-based, adopts "live" plan concept and advocates strong public-private partnership whereby programmes are undertaken in collaboration with various implementing agencies. The Masterplan has outlined 32 initiatives of which six are High Impact Programmes.
Today’s section of Designing Malaysia will highlight the essence of innovation governance that is pivotal in creating a step change in the national innovation ecosystem. Technology Commercialisation Platform - TCP (High Impact Programme 2) is one of the six High Impact Programmes that was designed and implemented in 2014 to enable more SMEs to innovate and commercialise their products and services.
TCP aims to provide end-to-end facilitation across the entire innovation development and commercialisation process such as advisory, technical assistance, market intelligence, capacity building and financing.
Since its launch, the Programme has admitted a total of 138 Malaysian SMEs and facilitated the transfer of 177 intellectual property rights from academia into industry and produced 34 successfully commercialised projects with 40 innovative products while the rest of the projects are in progress.
This was made possible through the visionary and dynamic leadership, and innovation governance of Datuk Hafsah Hashim that speaks volumes in terms of developing overarching values, policies and initiatives for establishing a corporate innovation constitution.
As such, PlaTCOM Ventures was formed through a strategic collaboration between SME Corporation Malaysia and Agensi Inovasi Malaysia (AIM) to implement and run this unique national initiative for our SME development.
The leadership of Datuk Hafsah in driving the SME Masterplan is an ideal exemplary of an innovation leadership bringing much positive impact to the growth of our country’s GDP, increase in business formation, high growth and innovative firms as well as rise in productivity.
The smart model of TCP worked with businesses, government and the research base, to help create a far-reaching programme of technology-enabled innovation.
The journey of TCP has been remarkable where we have learnt the power of making connections between people and organisations and, through investment or support, providing a catalyst for new solutions.
We call this approach Concept-to-Commercialisation which supports the Government’s ambitions and reviews on growth and focuses on helping business navigate the difficult territory after a concept or idea has been initially developed, but before it can enter the market and be fully commercialised.
An agile and practical approach is essential to enable innovation. Driving the SME Masterplan requires an effective innovation governance system that makes the CEO and the top management team fully aware of all the drivers of total innovation.
TCP has been continuously making its mark in the Malaysian SME landscape due to the following effective innovation governance system.
- Establishes responsibilities and processes for detecting and reacting appropriately to meaningful weak signals in the environment.
- Helps leaders collectively challenge their own assumptions and past beliefs and, whenever necessary, it encourages them to “unlearn” things.
- Induces management and board leaders to scrutinise and challenge the future validity of past strategies and success formulae.
- Ensures that critical technology choices are made only after consulting with experts and careful analysis of the pros and cons.
- To link innovation and business strategies explicitly.
- To focus all functions on the challenge of innovation commercialisation.
- Defines clearly who oversees innovation, and the level of delegated authority, as well as changes to the chosen model when necessary.
- To build a path for new generation of innovation leaders.
The historical TCP strategy builds on the approaches we have developed to accelerate the pace of innovation in businesses that takes new directions.
Based on the clever mechanics of PlaTCOM Ventures with the guidance and leadership of SME Corporation Malaysia and Agensi Inovasi Malaysia, the TCP framework would be an ideal example for developing and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) around the world to learn and adopt.
We have also developed a strong understanding of what works best to stimulate SME innovations. We have deciphered not only on challenges that drive innovation, but also the power of partnerships and collaborations in producing synergistic and tangible results.
This platform that exhibits innovation governance at all levels demonstrate how it can be thought of as a system of mechanisms to align goals, allocate resources and assign decision-making authority for innovation, within businesses and with external parties.
* Viraj Perera is the CEO of PlaTCOM Ventures Sdn Bhd – the national technology commercialisation platform of Malaysia — a wholly owned subsidiary company of Agensi Inovasi Malaysia (AIM) formed in collaboration with SME Corp Malaysia.
