INTRODUCTION

Innovation is a top priority for businesses, institutions and governments all over the world. They are placing great emphasis on innovation in their plans and strategies, as innovation is recognised as the key driving force of long-term economic growth. Innovation is more than just the simple production of new technologies. Success requires excellent management of the innovation process through the continuous fostering of creativity, new business competencies, streamlined supply chains and new marketing formulas.

As global competition is heating up, the very nature of innovation is evolving over time. Innovation is more multidisciplinary, technologically complex and global and collaboration between scientists and engineers and between creators and users is now an imperative. The Congress will focus on few key areas to address this scenario –  effective innovation model to suit the changing business climate, the role of entrepreneurship in bringing technological innovations to the market and the need for public-private sector collaboration.

The highlight of the Congress is the sharing of experience in applying various innovation models in various countries. For example, Malaysia has reassessed her innovation approach with emphasis on the market-driven innovation, together with the existing technology-driven innovation. The former is a user-driven innovation which is responding to market needs and demands and has lower risks and shorter time to market.

Entrepreneurship and innovation – defined as the ability to transform knowledge and ideas into products, processes and services that have commercial applicability – are the key drivers of productivity growth and the only sustainable source of competitive advantage. Stimulating an entrepreneurial climate is vital to the success of innovation systems and the congress aims to have successful entrepreneurs tell us their success stories

Equally important is the public-private sector collaboration which is seen as the fuel for implementation and execution of the various innovation models, leading to entrepreneurship and this forum, countries that have successfully created alliances between the public and private sector within their countries will share with us their trials and tribulations.

The Congress, jointly organised by SIRIM Berhad and WAITRO is set to explore strategies, processes, concepts, models and tools that have been proven to work and will also examine novel ideas and approaches to identify innovations based on market needs and to develop  them for commercialisation. It will provide a forum to examine the factors affecting the interplay between productivity, innovation and competition  across the globe and to discuss the roles of the public and private sectors in the development of a healthy and dynamic relationship between them.

The Congress participants will have the rare opportunity of listening to success stories from esteemed international speakers. There will also be ample opportunities for participants to find partners for potential collaboration and undertake business-technology matching. For WAITRO members, it will be an ideal platform to showcase their technological innovations meeting the Global market needs.