Malaysian Tech Scene

1.       I was asked an impromptu question on what the tech scene looked like in Malaysia yesterday, asked by no less the poster girl of India’s biotech / molecular biology industry, Dr Villoo. Didn’t really have time to prepare the answer, and FZ answered it nonetheless. If I was to give my own assessment it would be this:

·         We have never had the tech development and innovation culture, and in that respect were similar to India back in the early 90s

·         Then Bangalore and MSC burst onto the scene, but Bangalore is almost fully wi-fied now, and Cyberjaya is only now looking to move beyond its ghost town image

·         So what went wrong? Did we lack the skills? Apparently, our institutions failed to produce the required manpower. And failed also to take heed of what made Si Valley tick when Asian immigration provided some of the brainpower to generate this.

·         Added to this, MOSTI squandered the opportunity by going for glam policies of sending supermodels into space. (no personal disrespect meant to our astronaut, I’m only referring to misguided policies being initiated by the leadership who failed to acknowledge that we were working on a declining and thinner wallet since 1998 to pursue glam policies)

·         Our ecosystem of tech agencies was falsely pursuing picking winners policies instead of tech transfer to indigenous development. Not such a major mistake to make, Singapore hasn’t been doing that well either when looking at their biotech initiative

·         In essence, we missed the boat, but we’re still in the game

2.       So, where to now? The IT still has some life in it, and is slowly transforming into the creative space but we do need the creative inputs from the same people who had managed to produce Ipin and Upin (or is it the other way around?) We probably do not have the scale to do widespread and need to be very selective in which techs to concentrate on, and produce the necessary ecosystem in the academic and industries to push this through.

3.       RE is a nice platform. Obviously, carbon markets is a nice touch, seeing that we have untapped resources in biomass and EFB. Smart grids are another that could tap the existing database and network capabilities. I think the solar manufacturing thing is good as it sits nicely off our existing E&E ecosystem, but again trying to compete with China is suicidal. A bit lower up or down the value stream and focusing on higher margin areas, research for instance and we could possibly look better. Machining tech probably not our best bet but we could take some components off here and there and use these horizontal capabilities across multiple platforms, including that of orthopaedics.

4.       Biotech is a touch and go thing, same as Agri. Funds are still flowing in, but the scale, patience and trust could be wearing thin already. Are we able to hold on for much longer in these last 2 areas? In addition to Agri, we need to do look at the role of Petronas, apart from feeding the fat cats in investment banks for IPOs and such.

5.       Lots of work, lots of work, lots of trust to be gained, lots of capabilities to be developed. Do we have the right attitudes for knowledge and skill accumulation to push this through? Meritocracy is the main game-changer for me. Without this, tech suffers. Even worse, the country suffers, a slow, painful disease eating away our core at creating our own internal wealth.