Myanmar’s innovation ecosystem is geographically limited to Yangon. In order to take advantage of technology and practical developments occurring globally and in Myanmar’s neighbours, wide ranging support is needed to take innovation beyond Yangon’s city borders.
What’s needed to enable Innovation?
Critical areas and processes necessary to enable such innovation include: 1) product innovation where new, redesigned or substantially improved goods or services become available; 2) process innovation where new or significantly improved production or delivery methods evolve; 3) business model innovation where there is conscious change to an efficient existing or a new business model; 4) social innovation where novel solutions are applied to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable; 5) network innovation whereby processes involving multiple players (within and outside an organization) contribute towards creating the earlier noted innovations; and 6) organisational innovation where a new organisational method to undertake business practices is adopted.
Typical actors in Myanmar needed to help create an expanding, evolving innovative ecosystem include government agencies with committed policy makers and regulators to provide a positive enabling business and social environment, academics, start-ups & enterprises, incubators, accelerators and market facilitators, and of course, finance providers.
The recently published innovation ecosystem snapshot of Yangon identifies the ecosystem stakeholders and examines the processes in which the creation, diffusion, and transformation of concepts, knowledge and ideas are producing, or are needed to produce new or improved products, services, processes or business models.
The snapshot clearly shows there is increasing excitement about developing the outreach of Yangon’s innovation ecosystem to support and enhance the nascent innovation ecosystem, particularly in Shan State, the largest agriculture – based state in Myanmar. Finance providers and enterprises looking for potential business partnerships are examining opportunities to step into the new markets resulting from this evolving scenario.
For questions regarding the snapshot please contact Impact Hub Yangon on yangon@impacthub.net
Author: Rita O’Sullivan Funding and Partnership Development Adviser, IHY https://www.linkedin.com/in/ita-o-sullivan-804b914/
