Let Thu Duc City from 2021 be the capital of the creative economy

The construction of Thu Duc City into an innovative and highly interactive urban area is very right and timely, but it is necessary to make a breakthrough so as not to miss the opportunity.

With the orientation of building into an innovative, highly interactive urban area, Thu Duc City is expected and will be the leading economy of HCMC and the whole southern region.

Ho Chi Minh City Law had an interview with Mr. Huynh Kim Tuoc (photo), Executive Director of Ho Chi Minh City Innovation and Startup Support Center (Saigon Innovation Hub, under Ho Chi Minh City Department of Science and Technology), related to this subject.

Solve both economic and social problems

Reporter: What does the establishment of Thu Duc city into a creative urban area mean for the creative economy, sir?

+ Mr. Huynh Kim Tuoc: In the past 10 years, the world has formed innovative urban areas that operate very effectively and bring great added value such as in the US, Sweden, Finland, Korea... This trend is being approached by many countries to participate in the creative economic chain, attracting large corporations around the world to invest and use their technology.

Every economy needs infrastructure to serve that economy. For example, an agricultural economy requires a drying yard and a milling plant. The industrial economy must have export processing zones, industrial parks, processing and processing factories, and production workshops. The information technology economy needs to have software zones…

Similarly, the creative economy, the infrastructure that serves it is the creative city. Thu Duc City, a creative urban area east of Ho Chi Minh City, is a very important factor for the creative economy. Looking at this creative city, we also immediately understand who live and work in it. The construction of an innovative urban area in Thu Duc City is also a very natural way of regulating population. Although few people can create great value, the city solves both economic problems and social problems.

The three components that make up the creative economy

In Thu Duc City, how will the creative economy model be operated?

+ The compulsory requirement of the creative economy is to have the following three areas:

The first is universities and research institutes: A place to gather scientists to create technologies, create formulas, create processes and solutions. The state must create space and conditions to promote scientists to create goods that are creative ideas.

Thu Duc city now has enough potential to form a creative urban area and develop a creative economy. Ho Chi Minh City has a quarter of intellectuals equal to that of the whole country. Every year, the city has more than 120,000 newly graduated engineers, in which the force of information technology engineers is very large. This is the desire of many developed countries in the world.

In the past 30 years, we have had a generation of researchers and scientists in the direction of technology, different from the previous trend of going in the direction of academia. This force has also been absorbing foreign cultures in terms of respect for law, intellectual property, and research orientation. Although there are still some difficulties, the research potential is very abundant, the problem lies in the market problem. How to solve the problem between "he" research and "he" market. This is not an easy story because it involves an entire ecosystem. And that is also the reason why Thu Duc creative city was born.

The second area is a system of incubators with infrastructure for incubation and development of sample products. Here, a recipe after research can create hundreds of products. Each investor, each business can buy that formula to develop into products to sell to the market.

Recently, Ho Chi Minh City has had a lot of creative start-up activities and has passed the initial infancy period. Startups aren't bad at all, but not yet standard. An important problem is that between the nursery area and the school area, the institute has not been linked and has not shared a common market development path. However, through many years of research, teaching and management in the fields of science, technology and business in the field, I have confidence in this area. In fact, a large number of scientists have produced valuable research results.

What is the third area left, sir?

+ The third area is the factories producing market products. The peculiarity of this "game" is that when corporations realize the value of research ideas, right at the prototype stage, the financial world has already focused on this. Even many corporations also order schools and research institutes according to their titles.

Each subdivision forms an ecosystem with the participation of financial institutions, supporting industries, other intermediary organizations… Especially the participation of financial institutions. They will participate in investment, incubation, technology trading ...

From another angle, it is creative products that also help 500 businesses in the city operate more efficiently. That is the synergistic effect of the creative economy.

Must break through to not miss the opportunity

Thu Duc city has just been established, the creative economy is also very new. There will be a lot of things to consider, sir?

+ That's right. The birth of Thu Duc City with the available potentials of dozens of universities and research institutes in Thu Duc, the Hi-Tech Park in District 9 and the financial center in Thu Thiem is a solution for the bright economy. created by Ho Chi Minh City.

The question is where is our creative capacity now? Can this force create goods? Are they capable of inventing source technology or just plain technology? How can we get big corporations to invest and trust our innovative products? These are difficult problems. We don't simply have a few universities, but we have to create an ecosystem. How to change the mindset and have a mechanism for universities from just doing research and teaching to looking for revenue from selling creative products.

According to statistics, in 2018 the world had about 200 companies with revenue over 1 billion USD, in Vietnam there were seven private companies with revenue over 1 billion USD. It is worth mentioning that that revenue is only equal to that of a university in Seoul, Korea. Only one university can achieve such "huge" revenue is very thought-provoking.

In Ho Chi Minh City over the past time, many companies and large corporations have started to participate in the creative economy in Vietnam with a long-term vision. They join because they understand Vietnam, they see the potential and their philosophy is to join and play from the ground up.

Therefore, establishing Thu Duc city with the orientation of a creative and highly interactive urban area is very right and timely, but it is necessary to make a breakthrough so as not to miss the opportunity. However, it is also not possible to be hasty, only willpower. Because it also takes the city the first five years to learn and participate in the global common chain. Then there is a roadmap to develop and gradually replace them, and then how to master…

Thank you sir.