Najib launches social impact exchange to strengthen innovation

KUALA LUMPUR: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak today launched the pay-for-impact Social Impact Exchange (SIX) to further strengthen the innovation culture in the country.
He said SIX was Malaysia's first pay-for-impact exchange to channel untapped corporate resources to high performing social-purpose organisations (SPOs).
He said the exchange was designed to parallel a traditional stock exchange and would be the focal point of funding SPOs and their intervention projects.
"This initiative will be jointly implemented by Malaysia Innovation Agency and the Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC), under the National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS) ambit," he said at the Global Entrepreneurship Community Summit 2017 here today.
At the event, Najib also announced the placement of South East Asia's first United Nations Technology Innovation Laboratory at the Futurise Centre.
He said the proposed centre, announced in the 2018 Budget, would also house the region's first entrepreneurship Internet radio station, eFM, which would be driven by the Global Entrepreneurship Movement (GEM).
Najib said this was in tandem with the aspiration to create the centre which was aimed at stimulating and accelerating innovation, capacity building and the commercialisation of products and inventions of the future.
"This centre, led by Cyberview with MaGIC as its strategic, will bring government, corporations, academia and entrepreneurs together to address issues on future technologies like smart city development, robotics and artificial intelligence," he said.
The prime minister said both initiatives were part of the government's efforts to emphasise the importance of innovation to the country's future economic development.
"We now live in uncertain times. Innovation is disrupting traditional thinking and shifting services and products to a new and more competitive level.
"But I am optimistic about our future and the central role that knowledge, science and entrepreneurship will play in it," said Najib, adding that innovation was not purely for start-ups and the private sector but must also be embraced by everyone.
"Innovation must be implemented for everyone and by everyone," he stressed.
The premier also said that innovation would also play an integral part in the nation's preparation for the advent of the fourth industrial revolution which would bring a range of new and disruptive technologies, impacting all discipline, economies and industries.
The two-day summit themed, "Designing the Future", gathered over 15,000 international and local entrepreneurs with the aim of catalysing the growth and development of the global entrepreneurship movement. — Bernama