This article series is in conjunction with Entrepreneurial Nation (E-Nation) Symposium, a 4-day event at MaGIC with the theme “Shaping An Entrepreneurial Nation”. The event will cut across 6 main pillars (Creative, Corporate Innovation, Education, Entrepreneurship, Policy and Social Entrepreneurship), with the objectives to:
1) bridge ecosystem players together to exchange ideas, promote collaboration and foster networking opportunities;
2) highlight recent entrepreneurial initiatives;
3) gather influential entrepreneurs and speakers to share rich knowledge and information to attendees;
4) promote the concept of social innovation and social responsibility to encourage the adoption and understanding of the conscious entrepreneurship concept.
This article is in line with the Entrepreneurship pillar.
On the launch day of the E-Nation Symposium, Dzuleira Abu Bakar, the CEO of MaGIC and YB Datuk Seri Mohd Redzuan Yusof the Minister of Entrepreneur Development took the stage in two separate speeches to the crowd.
What united them? They talked about what the government is doing and what entrepreneurs should do to bring Malaysia forward into the limelight as an entrepreneurial nation.
1. Focus On Innovation
As shared by Dzuleira, innovation is crucial because it is a primary source of competitive advantage for countries and companies no matter what industry or environment they are in.
Innovation will then drive forward efficiency and that will bring in higher productivity. With higher productivity, the industry will be able to fill in a wide variety of needs.
“Technology, in particular, is a powerful driving force in innovative capacity, particularly as it pertains to both the evolution of innovations and the way they proliferate. Technology is innately scalable, demonstrating a consistent trend towards new innovations as a result of improving upon current ones,” said Dzuleira.
2. Aggressively Adopt IR 4.0
Continuing on, she mentioned that IR 4.0 (Industrial Revolution 4.0) is a concept that many know about, but it isn’t something that is understood by many.
According to Dzuleira, IR 4.0 brings in 4 key principles for us to focus on: interoperability, information transparency, actionable insights and automation. Focusing on these principles will bring in benefits throughout the manufacturing sector.
However, the manufacturing sector in itself needs to be looked at in a broader perspective as the process of manufacturing is needed in most industries ranging from agriculture to healthcare.
YB Datuk Seri Mohd Redzuan said, “To fulfil our aspirations in making Malaysia an entrepreneurial nation by 2030, it is crucial that we create a dynamic ecosystem that ensures all segments of society can benefit from it.”
A few weeks ago, our Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said that we have to aggressively adopt IR 4.0 in view of how fast technology is moving forward.
Both he and Dzuleira spoke about growing Malaysia’s status to an Asian Tiger and to be a hub for IR 4.0 in Southeast Asia.
Dictionary Time: Asian Tiger, also known as Asian Dragon, is the moniker given to the economies of four countries, namely Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. The term was coined as the countries underwent rapid industrialisation while maintaining high growth rates during the 20th century. Malaysia is referred to as a developing country of the Tiger Cub Economy and not part of the Four Asian Tigers.
3. Charging Into IR 5.0
Dzuleira also mentioned that while companies are still trying to adopt the principles of IR 4.0, the 5th Industrial Revolution is already underway.
She described IR 5.0 as a time where man and machine reconcile and find ways to work together in an effort to improve the means and efficiency of production. At the same time, the interactions between human and machine will be more meaningful and enlightening.
To match this, we need to develop new skills to cope with the speed of development.
“We also have to increase our high-skilled workforce from 18% to 35% by 2020, but are we ready to meet that?” was a question YB Datuk Seri Mohd Redzuan threw out to the crowd.
The government is looking into cybersecurity in detail, as data is needed for everything and it’ll even help entrepreneurs reap the benefit of the economy.
4. The Role The Government Plays
The minister then continued on saying that startups that are thinking of developing within Malaysia to service 32 million people can look towards international markets. The government is ready and willing to facilitate the growth of companies even beyond Malaysia.
The Prime Minister has called to Malaysian businesses to not just look at improving business processes, but also to invest more into R&D.
“Malaysia is not lacking when it comes to inventions and innovations. There are over 1,000 inventions that are kept in the museum because we don’t commercialise them. There are people out there that want to own 100% of nothing, rather than a small percentage of something. We will need to change our mindset when it comes to the commercialisation of R&D,” said YB Datuk Seri Mohd Redzuan.
5. Changing Mindsets
“There’s no such thing as a perfect product, the world revolves around dynamism and new inventions,” he continued.
Malaysia is well placed to play a leading role when it comes to the development of technology.
“To be the champions, we have to learn and relearn. We must transform and retransform. We must also incorporate the Kaizen principle in our daily lives.”
Dictionary Time: Kaizen means change for the better; and it means improving one’s’ personal life, home life, social life and working life. When applied to the workplace, Kaizen means a continuous improvement that involves everyone.
– Masaaki Imai, Founder of Kaizen Institute
6. We’re All In This Together
The minister then called out for entrepreneurs to assist and impart knowledge to each other, regardless of social status or financial capability.
“We must not forget to assist and to impart knowledge for our fellow Malaysians. It’s the only way we can prosper. We can then reduce the disparity between the high-income and low-income community,” he said.
This will ensure inclusive economic growth, achieving Malaysia’s Shared Prosperity Vision 2030 through entrepreneurship.
Dzuleira then mentioned that she does see a number of growing social entrepreneurs that are focused on solving the problems we have in the world and creating long-lasting impact beyond just financial returns. And that’s the sort of spirit that MaGIC would like to see in our local community.
“It takes a village to raise a child, and it would take a concerted effort of a nation to build successful businesses. MaGIC knows that the task won’t be easy nor linear,” she said.
- You can read more on what we’ve written about MaGIC here.