According to the World Economic Forum, Emerging Asia, including, Malaysia, is in real danger of falling into an inequality trap as it recovers from the pandemic.

The region’s most financially disadvantaged have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

The coronavirus has bred another more virulent virus, one that threatens generations, the “inequality virus” – a virus that is exacerbating health and income gaps among the rich and poor communities in the country.

Global poverty alleviation confederation Oxfam reported that 87% of 295 economists surveyed across 79 countries think that coronavirus will lead to an increase or a major increase in income inequality in their country.

In its report there is a statement that paints a depressing picture of the polarities we are facing: “It took just nine months for the top 1,000 billionaires’ fortunes to return to their pre-pandemic highs but for the world’s poorest people recovery could take 14 times longer; more than a decade.”

Since we entered the endemic stage, people’s concerns over the prices of goods and services caused by disrupted supply chains, to high commodity prices, global conflicts, and a weaker ringgit have dominated headlines.

According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia, families in both M40 and B40 communities will be hit by these rise in prices with their disposable income affected, and decades of effort that has been invested in closing the gap to ensure the nation’s stability and sustainable future will be derailed.

How do we then, put socio-economic growth back on track?

Perhaps now, more than ever before, we have to come together, to work towards putting the nation back on track to achieve its ambition to become a high-income, inclusive nation that leaves no one behind with developments for the economy, people, and the environment.

During my work on the economic pillar for the Academy of Sciences Malaysia’s data-driven based study in 2020 (Science Outlook 2020 Report) on Malaysia’s Science Technology Innovation landscape, published before the pandemic, we had identified three high-level gaps across industries: a talent and skills gap, competitiveness/industry capability gap and a market gap which hampered our development of a sustainable economy.

The report posits that building a stronger STIE (Science, Technology, Innovation and Economy) ecosystem will have a positive impact on our firms, organization, and people, and enable linkages that can deliver better economic, social, and environmental outcomes.

A Collaborative Ecosystem Benefits Everyone

Based on the findings of the 2020 report, we had implemented an innovation ecosystem in Sunway University that connects many varied stakeholders including academics, researchers, industries, investors, and governments to deliver the Goals around SDGs and planetary health.

This innovation ecosystem relies on the five focus areas, known as RDICE that are framed around the 10-10 MySTIE, namely:

• Research (strong fundamental and applied research that lead to high quality publications – as precursors for new scientific breakthrough)
• Development (multidisciplinary research that turns fundamental research into applications that address challenges faced by industry and the broader community)
• Innovation (generation of intellectual property and new discoveries that enhance process improvement, product development and new solutions that add values for industry, government and community/end users)
• Commercialisation (development of new products, services and solutions that meet the needs of the market, including creating new market potential and revenue streams ), and
• Economy (entrepreneurship education, and venture build startups through the 3Ms – Market access & technology sandboxes, Funding (Money), and Mentorship (startup incubation & accelerator).

And just two years later, the open innovation ecosystem has proved to benefit stakeholders.

Sunway University has recently been awarded number one in Graduate Employability among all universities in Malaysia by Talentbank Group through the National Graduate Employability Index which gauges the employability rate of graduates from universities all across Malaysia.

Sunway Innovation Labs (iLabs) at Sunway University has grown into a community of 62,837, generated 937 ideas, accelerated more than 100 start-ups and invested in more than 15 start-ups. Of these startups, five startups are created by student entrepreneurs who will become employers instead of employees.

All these startups would go on to create hundreds, if not thousands of employment opportunities, contribute hundreds of thousands if not hundreds of millions to the economy in the future, and perhaps even regionalize with the help of mentors, venture capital funds, as well as market access.

Because Sunway University, as an open innovation ecosystem, prioritises accelerating the SDGs and planetary health, it allows bootstrapping start-ups to accelerate their innovation development through collaboration with Sunway University, via the “reverse pitch” approach, where both startups and researchers work together to develop solutions that matters to the community and nation.

Some examples :

• Sunway University, Sunway iLabs, and Southeast Asia’s largest integrated e-commerce platform Carsome, have forged a strategic partnership that includes the setting up of Data Innovation Lab in Sunway University. This collaboration aims to nurture data science talents through industry driven hackathons, and put innovation in action through artificial intelligence/ machine learning research collaboration.
• Sarawak Forest Corporation, Sunway University, and the University of Technology Sarawak are working with Japan’s leading technology companies, Aerosense Inc. and Funlead Corp to improve the mangrove forests in Sarawak through the adoption of drone technology and artificial intelligence. Aerosense and Funlead are both the alumni of 2021 JETRO-Sunway Innovation Labs (iLabs) Digital Transformation Accelerator that aims to support the Japanese companies to better position themselves and expand across Malaysia, using the Sunway ecosystem as a launchpad and testbed.
• Sunway University partnered with Toyeight on a research project that aims to address the socio-educational issues in Southeast Asia by making developmental assessment affordable and accessible whilst rapidly improving the understanding of child developmental levels in different communities and areas. Through this collaboration, Toyeight also gained access to new talent from Sunway University and conducted a pilot trial with Sunway Business Units, which included using Sunway City as a testbed for Toy Eight’s innovations.
• Sunway iLabs has partnered up with Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry to launch a sustainable smart city sandbox pioneer programme between National Technology and Innovation Sandbox (NTIS) to develop smart cities which has the potential to bring socio, and environmental benefits to 70% of the country’s population live in the urban areas –  tackling urbanisation issues and raise the quality of life.

Undoubtedly, Sunway University has a unique advantage. It has the backing of the Sunway Group, which is a multibillion conglomerate, with 13 successful business lines and a team of 16,000 employees with presence in more than 50 local and overseas markets. Sunway University is a “test-bed” for developing a wide range of new innovations and solutions for many of the business supply chains. Students, academics, industry, policy-makers and community organisations are core enablers of the Sunway Open RDICE ecosystem.

Not many corporations or education institutions have the luxury of such resources. But what it demonstrates, most of all is, bouncing back from the pandemic is not the work of the government alone. It can only be achieved only through a multi-stakeholder collaborative partnership model.

Professor Mahendhiran Sanggaran Nair 
Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research Engagement & Impact)
Email: @email

This article was first published in Business Today, 30 July 2022.