Complementary factors are needed for successful innovation projects

Currently, in the world , innovation is considered one of the important development indicators, the central factor guiding the development of each country. As one of the countries with high determination in innovation, Vietnam is increasingly perfecting the factors that promote effective innovation.

Continuing to consider innovation as a national priority, innovation indexes as a tool to measure and evaluate the performance of the economy , the Vietnamese Government has taken many investment measures to improve innovation indexes, such as: Building national digital technology platforms in various fields from platforms for sharing, synthesizing, analyzing data in industries, online meetings, payments, identification to Internet of Things (IoT) devices, AI, virtual assistants, supply chains.

Thanks to the support of digital technology in businesses, government agencies, schools and households, Vietnam has achieved many important results in preventing and fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing to maintaining and recovering the economy.

In addition, to build high-quality human resources for innovation, Vietnam has initially built an innovation system, a national innovation network gathering domestic and foreign experts and scientists with more than 1,000 members and this number is continuing to expand.

A team of high-quality human resources, along with the construction of high-tech zones and programs to support businesses in digital transformation, will promote scientific research, creative startups among state agencies, research institutes and change technological processes, production, and business operations management on digital platforms, improving production capacity and competitiveness of businesses in the future.

The above solutions have helped Vietnam rank 46/132 countries and economies, up 2 places compared to 2022, and is considered one of the 7 middle-income countries that have achieved the most progress in innovation over the past decade (according to the 2023 Global Innovation Index (GII) report).

Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Bui The Duy said that despite being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnam has maintained great efforts to recover and develop the socio-economy, including the field of innovation. In recent times, the Government and the Prime Minister have given strong direction in promoting and maintaining open policies for investment, production and business activities as well as creating capital sources for investment in science and technology and innovation.

Along with that, a series of foreign activities to promote cooperation in science and technology and innovation with other countries have created new catalysts, opening up new opportunities for Vietnam.

However, currently, Vietnam's innovation data statistics are still lacking and incomplete. The innovation ecosystem still has some weaknesses that need to be overcome.

For example, in research and development (R&D) activities, in countries ranked above Vietnam, spending on R&D accounts for a high proportion of GDP, especially Israel at 5.6%, while in average countries ranked above Vietnam it is about 0.9%, while Vietnam has not reached 0.5%.

For innovation projects to succeed

According to Deputy Minister Bui The Duy, this is a weakness of Vietnam's innovation ecosystem when resources attracted to research groups and research institutes are still quite modest.

Or, promoting innovative startups has been carried out for 10 years now with many programs and projects, but we still have few unicorn businesses (valued at over 1 billion USD).

"Many ministries, sectors and localities have programs to support startups and organize startup festivals. Sometimes a startup receives awards and support from several different ministries. That means there is an imbalance between organizing many activities related to promotion and capital calling, but there are almost no activities related to connecting to create input from research results at universities," said Deputy Minister Bui The Duy.

At the local level, in reality, localities are still confused in participating in the implementation of the Government's Resolution on improving the national GII index, because many similar statistics at the local level are not available, and at the same time, the assessment method according to international standards is still new, so there are points that are not suitable for the local level of Vietnam.

In addition, due to differences between localities in terms of socio-economic scale, population, land, economic structure, development orientation, etc., localities need and must choose different socio-economic development models based on science, technology and innovation, suitable to their own context, conditions and characteristics. This makes localities unable to grasp the current status of their local socio-economic development models based on science, technology and innovation.

According to experts, it is necessary to unify the concept, characteristics and classification of innovation as well as distinguish innovation from creation, invention... From there, improve state management activities in this field. Currently, Vietnam's national innovation system is still weak and is still being perfected, not ready for testing and applying new products as well as new business models based on innovation. Therefore, investing in research and development is not a strategic solution but requires a series of additional factors for innovation projects to be successful./.

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