National Innovation Agency: Strategy and Innovation Plan

Mark Rozario, CEO of Agensi Inovasi Malaysia talks about the National Innovation Agency and the innovation program.

He says, “We first address the ‘ecosystem of innovation’, and look at wealth creation as a whole, dealing with wealth creation opportunities for us as a country. In terms of the ecosystem for innovation, there are six core areas that we are looking at. Firstly, cultivating a thinking culture. This is looking at how we are going to equip the coming generation with higher-order thinking skills, tools that will help us become more innovative. We have a program called ‘I Think’, which introduces thinking skills in our schools, high-order thinking tools. We started with the introduction of the use of thinking maps – 8 different thinking maps that can be used by schoolchildren in any given situation. We are trying to move the schoolchildren away from rote learning. This program is currently being rolled out into all our 10,000 schools, working very closely with the Ministry of Education. We also have a design thinking school called Genovasi, which has a 10-week design-thinking program targeted at young working adults, both from the private sector as well as government ministries and agencies.  So, this is the area of cultivating a thinking culture. “

“The next area aims to transform strategic sectors. Here, we identify strategic sectors in the economy and try to find new wealth-creation opportunities. For example, we came up with a National Biomass Strategy, which looks into the opportunities for using the biomass being generated in the various sectors, primarily the palm oil sector. We are the second largest producer of crude palm oil and we generate about 80 million tons of palm oil biomass, in addition to the 18 million tons of crude palm oil. As a country, there are tremendous opportunities for us to use this biomass in much higher value-added industries,” he says.