It has been a while since I wrote the last post. I went to Vietnam for vacation but also for business for a longer period. For most of the time I stayed in Saigon, a city which I visited for around 10 years ago. Long time has passed and a lot have changed.
I was told before I left home that everything I ever need from the Western world, I would find it in Saigon. It’s true. In many ways the lifestyle in Saigon is so westernized that I hardly recognized that I was in the middle of a city, a country that was only begun to open its door to the world no more than 14 years ago. It’s still communism though- but it is communism blended with capitalism- and how all these affect the country’s innovation capacity?
Many would say that developing countries do not know how to generate innovation- yet. What normally happens is imitation which is a result of technological as well as knowledge transfer from the developed world. The more they imitate, the faster will they learn the necessary skills that one day, will make them independent innovators. In many ways, I do see it coming for the case of Vietnam. It’s actually already begun- the generation born in 80s does seek broader horizons, and strive to acquire new knowledge. In many ways, what they seek is to break free from the old habit thinking which has been dominated in the Vietnamese mentality for a very long time. They strive for creativity and independency. Vietnam has always been a country with a cultural value based on education. It is a prestige to be well-educated- if you of course can afford it. As more people become rich, many parents now choose to send their children abroad to acquire higher education, either to Singapore or USA, England, Australia, Germany etc. I spoke to a couple of young guys and a girl, one will go to New Zealand next month, one is applying visa to England and both of them are saying: the education in Vietnam is not challenging enough- they want to obtain better skills by studying abroad.
It is no doubt that there are fundamental changes happening in Vietnam, from an economic perspective but also from human resources perspective. The country seems to attract more brain-ware which in the end, could build up a necessary knowledge capacity that is required to leverage a country’s innovation capacity. There is still a long way to go. Hopefully, Vietnam will be able to break free from the imitation stage and is able to find its own way to generate true innovation but at the same time, preserve its own unique characteristics when it comes to economic, social, or cultural development.
