 |
| World Bank Division Director for Việt Nam, Cambodia and Lao PDR, Mariam J. Sherman. Photo courtesy of National Innovation Center |
Mariam J. Sherman*
Science, expertise and innovation will form Việt Nam’s future, its standing on the planet, and the lives of its individuals for a long time to come back. The nation stands at a pivotal second, armed with landmark reforms and a transparent dedication to carve out its place as a high-tech powerhouse. The query is now not if Việt Nam ought to pursue this path, however the way it can win the worldwide race for expertise and expertise.
Việt Nam enters this race with actual benefits: a younger, gifted workforce desperate to be taught; hard-won macroeconomic stability; a strategic location in Asia’s most dynamic progress hall; and a confirmed means to adapt and overcome. What is required now is not only ambition, however an actionable technique.
Drawing on world expertise, we suggest a ‘three-plus-one’ formula, detailed within the World Bank’s new report, Forging Việt Nam’s Semiconductor Future: Talent and Innovation Leading the Way. This framework rests on three core pillars – expertise, an innovation ecosystem and provide chain linkages – sure collectively by one essential aspect: a pointy concentrate on a couple of, focused clusters of innovation excellence.
The first pillar: a deep reservoir of expertise
The bedrock of any high-tech ambition is its individuals: expert staff, top-tier researchers and visionary technopreneurs. To compete globally, Việt Nam wants not solely extra graduates but in addition extra technicians, scientists and engineers educated at superior, world-class ranges. This requires constructing greater, higher expertise pipelines. Universities want vital funding to lift each the amount and high quality of undergraduate and postgraduate coaching, empowering school and college students to conduct cutting-edge analysis and acquire related trade expertise.
Vocational faculties are simply as essential. They have to be on the middle of expertise improvement, co-designing coaching programmes immediately with companies to provide the expert technicians that high-tech industries depend upon.
However, growing expertise is just half the battle; attracting and retaining it’s the different. Nearly 65 per cent of Việt Nam’s prime tech expertise in crucial and rising applied sciences at the moment work abroad. This isn’t a loss, however a latent alternative. Creating the fitting situations for this diaspora to return and thrive can shut information and community gaps which may in any other case take a long time to fill. Investing in individuals is the elemental first step.
The second pillar: a thriving innovation ecosystem
The second pillar is constructing an ecosystem the place analysis can flourish, concepts can transfer from the lab to the market, and startups can scale into homegrown unicorns. This requires a ‘triple helix’ partnership that tightly weaves collectively academia, authorities, and trade.
Việt Nam has laid vital groundwork. In 2025, it ranks a powerful forty fourth on the Global Innovation Index, and Hồ Chí Minh City is already one in every of Southeast Asia’s most dynamic innovation hubs. Yet, higher-value work – like product design, engineering, and commercialising analysis – continues to be in its infancy. From 2010 to 2020, Việt Nam filed fewer than 100 patents within the prime 5 worldwide patent places of work, with nearly none in semiconductors. This is the place the best alternative for progress lies.
Boosting private and non-private funding in R&D infrastructure is crucial. For semiconductors, we name for pressing funding in nationwide semiconductor R&D hubs – world-class services the place universities, researchers, and startups can share entry to high-performance computing, superior design instruments and companies to prototype and check chip designs. These hubs speed up innovation and provides college students and scientists the hands-on expertise wanted to show good designs into actuality.
The third pillar: forging deeper provide chain linkages
The third pillar focuses on deepening the ties between Việt Nam’s home firms and main foreign-invested (FDI) companies. The purpose is easy: assist Vietnamese enterprises seize extra worth by evolving from easy suppliers into trusted co-innovators and long-term companions of multinationals.
To speed up this, we suggest a collaborative partnership mannequin the place FDI companies, native firms, and the federal government co-invest to improve the capabilities of native companies. This method is grounded in confirmed successes. In Singapore, a authorities partnership matches multinational spending to carry SME suppliers via joint R&D. In Ireland, a nationwide scheme pairs world patrons with native companies and co-finances upgrades.
In Việt Nam, this might take the type of an FDI agency mentoring native SMEs to satisfy world requirements, with authorities funding tied to outcomes. It may additionally again joint tasks to check prototypes or localise key elements, creating direct entry factors right into a multinational’s manufacturing cycle. The payoff is obvious: information is anchored in Việt Nam, native firms win extra enterprise, and a technology of extremely expert expertise is constructed and retained.
The ‘plus one’: the facility of focus
Finally, the ‘plus one’ that ties all of it collectively is a relentless concentrate on a couple of well-chosen clusters of innovation excellence. Look at our neighbours: China has the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou hall, the Republic of Korea has its Daedeok Science Town, and Singapore has devoted innovation districts. Their frequent function is a excessive focus of universities, R&D institutes and high-tech companies in a single geographic space.
Imagine Saigon High Tech Park and Hòa Lạc High Tech Park ten years from now as the center of an innovation cluster for superior manufacturing – semiconductors, biomedicine and robotics. These may very well be ecosystems the place all the journey, from coaching and R&D to prototyping and full-scale manufacturing, occurs in a single place. Such clusters are highly effective magnets for expertise and concepts, inspiring younger individuals to pursue careers in science and attracting the worldwide Vietnamese diaspora dwelling.
This journey requires a whole-of-nation effort. The authorities units the imaginative and prescient, companies drive innovation, universities domesticate expertise, and worldwide companions just like the World Bank can convey world experience and financing.
Việt Nam’s improvement story has all the time been one in every of resilience and ambition. The subsequent chapter – a high-tech future constructed on homegrown innovation – is inside attain. This future turns into actual once we flip imaginative and prescient into motion, beginning now. VNS
*Mariam J. Sherman is the World Bank Division Director for Viet Nam, Cambodia and Lao PDR