The Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MOSTI) is restructuring two of its agencies via a consolidation to create a new technology commercialisation agency to accelerate Malaysia towards becoming an innovation-driven economy.
This new mandate will act as a technology commercialisation accelerator which has been approved by Cabinet.
The synergy will bring together the best of both Technology Park Malaysia (TPM) and the Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC).
TPM is the only 4th generation technology park in Malaysia with physical incubators and tech infrastructure, while MaGIC has played an important role in cultivating technology start-ups and innovation ecosystems with a wide range of interventions ranging from regulatory facilitation, market access support as well as capacity building.
This initiative is aimed at equipping Malaysia to be better positioned to tackle issues such as low commercialisation rates, low gross domestic expenditures on research and development (R&D) (GERD), low R&D spend by the private sector, and overlapping of roles between government agencies.
By building a pipeline that encompasses the entire value chain, from start-ups in incubation to high growth technology companies, this will allow Malaysia to strengthen and unlock value in the technology and innovation ecosystem.
A joint task force comprising both TPM and MaGIC, headed by the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer of TPM, Dzuleira Abu Bakar will be set up to oversee the establishment of the new agency.
MOSTI Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin has reviewed areas of priority which required Putrajaya’s interventions, starting with the commercialisation agenda in his first year in the ministry.
“The landscape for innovation continues to evolve at a furious pace for both tech start-ups and tech giants. We have done reasonably well in riding the wave of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), and we want to speed up the rate of commercialising our technological and innovative solutions in our push to make Malaysia a high-tech nation,” he said.
This was evident in the Malaysian Science Technology Innovation and Economic Development Framework (MySTIE 10-10) which was launched in December last year.
With technology commercialisation being one of the 10 STIE leap programmes designed to propel R&D conversion, creating spin-offs, targeted capacity building, technology development and ecosystem support.
In 2020, Malaysia was ranked 33rd out of 131 economies in the Global Innovation Index 2020, improving two rungs from 2019. Malaysia was ranked second among 37 upper middle-income group economies, and eighth among the 17 economies in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Oceania.
Additionally, MOSTI has announced that they will periodically share updates on the progress of this initiative.
