The National Innovation Agency (NAI), Government of Thailand, hosted the Thailand Innovation Week from October 4 – 6, 2018. Key innovation clusters and innovators presented their innovations of which some were awarded prizes. The 1,500 participants included executives of the government and private sector and ranged from entrepreneurs to students.
With the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Innovation Leadership Forum coinciding with the event, the NAI organized three sessions on October 04, 2018 which evolved around the Thai Performance in WIPO’s
Global Innovation Index (GII). Mr. Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, Head, Composite Indicator Research Section, Economics and Statistics Division at
WIPO and co-editor of the GII presented the reports findings, focusing on the main Thai innovation characteristics against the backdrop of performance in the wider ASEAN region and offered select innovation policy suggestions. He further reported on the Thai uptake of IP using WIPO country profile figures, while making explicit references to two of WIPO’s CDIP studies on “Study on the Use of Utility Models in Thailand” and “Industrial Design in Southeast Asian countries”, two fields of IP that Thailand scores particularly well on in the GII.
Presentations were followed by two panel discussions, the first “Thailand: A Government Strategy towards GII 2019” with participation of the Director-General of the Department of Intellectual Property (DIP), the Chief Executive Officer of the Thailand Management Association, the Secretary General of the Thailand Board of Investment and the Deputy Secretary-General, National Economic and Social Development Board. The second, “Leap Frog Thailand Innovation System”, involved prominent panelists that commented on the various Thai input and output dimensions covered by the GII, starting with Infrastructure covered by the Vice-Chairman, National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, Business Sophistication covered by the President, Thai Venture Capital Association, Human Capital and Research covered by the Secretary General, Office of the Higher Education Commission and Creative Output covered by the Acting Managing Director, Creative Economy Agency, Thailand.
On October 05, 2018, the Minister of Science and Technology opened the discussion for “Thailand and Global Innovation Policy” where Thai policy in the context of its performance in the GII and in the context of new developments in national innovation policies were the topic of conversation. Thailand’s Minister of Public Health, Minister of Education, the Chairman of the National Strategic Committee on Competitiveness, the Deputy Governor of Bangkok and several foreign speakers – such as from the Swedish Prime Minister’s Office and other international organizations or bilateral donor agencies such as USAID – were in attendance.