{"id":101,"date":"2013-12-02T03:45:20","date_gmt":"2013-12-01T19:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.www.innovationiseverywhere.com\/?p=101"},"modified":"2013-12-02T03:45:20","modified_gmt":"2013-12-01T19:45:20","slug":"malaysia-startup-hub-next-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/malaysia-startup-hub-next-steps\/","title":{"rendered":"Malaysia as a Startup Hub! What are the next steps?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a young country, Malaysia\u00a0has\u00a0quite an extensive history of building its own innovation ecosystem.<\/strong>\u00a0It opened its\u00a0Multimedia Super Corridor<\/a>\u00a0back in\u00a01997<\/strong>. The time has now arrived – and it also has for neighboring Singapore – to scale to greater heights. The aim: to have significant and successful startups so that people can associate a global brand with this country or any of its cities. That would be a huge endorsement for a successful innovation ecosystem.<\/p>\n

To discuss this topic, the Global Entrepreneurship Summit invited\u00a0two globetrotters and a local Malaysian insider.<\/strong>\u00a0Bowei Gai<\/a>\u200e, founder of the\u00a0World Startup Report<\/a>, visited\u00a026 countries in 9-months<\/strong>\u00a0of travels and produced very popular Slideshares on each of them.\u00a0Bjoern Hermann<\/a>\u200e, founder of Startup Compass, is also known for his\u00a0Startup Genome report<\/a>\u00a0that ranked innovation ecosystems across the world.\u00a0Nazrin Hassan<\/a>, founder of the Cradle Fund in Malaysia, an early stage investor in startups, has long worked in government agencies on the topic of innovation.<\/p>\n

\"Martin<\/a>

The top 20 innovation ecosystems in the world (Startup Genome)<\/p><\/div>\n

4 Essential Elements of a successful Innovation Ecosystem<\/h2>\n

According to the 3 panelists, the\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0recipe\u00a0\u00bb<\/strong>\u00a0for an ecosystem willing to\u00a0take the next big step\u00a0would involve different items, tools, and changes.<\/p>\n

First,\u00a0self-confidence<\/strong>. Silicon Valley remains the only known ecosystem in the world (ask amongst yourselves which city comes in 2nd best and you will struggle to agree on one).\u00a0Asia, says Nazrin, needs to speak for itself,<\/strong>\u00a0to showcase its history, successes, failures and identity. Benchmarking with the Valley makes no sense. Instead,\u00a0Malaysia should compare its progress with countries operating in similar contexts<\/strong>, such as Singapore or Hong Kong. And it’s not so much about competition between ecosystems as it is about the important\u00a0connections.<\/strong>\u00a0In this case, Malaysia could work constructively with Singapore on a platform to reach to the global markets.<\/p>\n

Opening Malaysia to the world seems to be another key component<\/strong>. In the Silicon Valley,\u00a0half the founders and 70% of PhD holders are foreign-born immigrants<\/strong>. Israel is also ranked highly in entrepreneurs’ minds for its links to startups in New York, Silicon Valley and Europe. The\u00a0immigration dilemma<\/strong>, characterized by the\u00a0visa policy<\/strong>\u00a0tensions in every country in the world, seems to be the most sensitive issue. The Singapore startup ecosystem, often referred to as the perfect textbook case study, is now facing a\u00a0rising anger from locals<\/strong>\u00a0who see top jobs and government money go to attracting foreign entrepreneurs. That said,\u00a0you can’t build an ecosystem with only locals as innovation stems from diversity, disruption, different influences, networks and connections.<\/p>\n

\"Martin<\/a>

Bowei & Bjoern, respectively documenting and comparating startup ecosystems in the world<\/p><\/div>\n

The\u00a0role of the government<\/strong>\u00a0should also be better defined, Having worked for 13 years at different levels of government, Nazrin wonders if the government should be\u00a0a leader or a feeder.<\/strong>\u00a0The panelists agree that the government and its agencies should create the conditions for a successful ecosystem (see what Malaysia PM Najib Razak said in the\u00a0opening keynote<\/a>\u00a0of the GES), and then\u00a0leave it to entrepreneurs to take over<\/strong>. The legal, tax and education frameworks can be made more conducive for entrepreneurship. For instance, universities should be more open to private companies to expose students to successful entrepreneurs. Another step would be to improve wages for developers. In Malaysia, developers earn only 5.600RM\/month ($1750), much lower than jobs in media or construction.<\/p>\n

Making and keeping people hungry is another necessity.<\/strong>\u00a0The\u00a0Israel<\/strong>\u00a0startup ecosystem is often mentioned: a nation under\u00a0siege<\/strong>, in a sea of what they see as enemies, and the leading role of the\u00a0army<\/strong>\u00a0as both a training for the youth and a key funder for research and development. Malaysia may seem\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0too lazy\u00a0\u00bb<\/em>, says the panel, and needs to find its own\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0enemy\u00a0\u00bb<\/em>\u00a0to raise the competitive mindset of its entrepreneurs. And\u00a0if there’s no one hungry in the country, import hungry people!<\/strong>\u00a0This is what\u00a0Chile<\/strong>\u00a0does very well with its\u00a0Startup Chile<\/a>\u00a0program. Any foreigner with an idea can apply for a $50 000 grant and a visa to launch its project in Chile.\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0It’s a cheap way to drive an ecosystem\u00a0\u00bb<\/em>, adds Bjoern.<\/p>\n

Malaysia en-route to becoming a thriving startup hub<\/h2>\n
\"Martin<\/a>

Malaysia success stories<\/p><\/div>\n

But relatively, Malaysia is doing well\u00a0<\/strong>and has\u00a0a\u00a0supportive<\/strong>\u00a0government. As our panelists mentioned, try to get through the paper work in\u00a0India<\/strong>\u00a0or corruption issues in\u00a0Indonesia<\/strong>\u00a0to understand how much better the situation is in Malaysia. We’ll be covering other innovation ecosystems this year to deepen our understanding of their mechanisms, best practices, and how to connect them to each other. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n

Do discover more startups from BRICS countries<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Check out our\u00a0report on Malaysia innovation ecosystem<\/a>\u00a0on Slideshare too<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a young country, Malaysia\u00a0has\u00a0quite an extensive history of building its own innovation ecosystem.\u00a0It opened its\u00a0Multimedia Super Corridor\u00a0back in\u00a01997. The time has now arrived – and it also has for neighboring Singapore – to scale to greater heights. The aim: to have significant and successful startups so that people can associate a global brand with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[54,47,48,49,51],"tags":[46,100,105,50],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-countries","category-government-innovators","category-innovators-category","category-markets-category","tag-asia","tag-government","tag-immigration","tag-malaysia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}