Creativity quest

Myanmar will have to fully flex all available muscles, if it is to catch up with other nations in Asia Pacific in the area of innovation and creativity.

Among 24 economies – including the United States and Finland for comparative purposes – Myanmar’s overall ranking in Asian Development Bank’s Creative Productivity Index was 22, higher only than Pakistan and Cambodia.

The index, released last week, uses 36 input indicators to measure the capacity and incentives for innovation, including how many global top 500 universities a country has, and eight output indicators.

On the input side, it was measured in three dimensions – capacity to innovate, incentives to innovate and environment conducive to innovation, which covers corruption and bureaucracy. In this area, Myanmar was at the bottom of the chart.

On the output side, indicators to measure innovation include the number of patents filed, export sophistication, value added to agriculture, and the number of books and films produced. In this regard, Myanmar’s ranking is 23rd. Only Cambodia fared worse.

“As countries seek to innovate to avoid middle-income traps, all governments – especially those with limited resources – need to be sure that their investments boost both efficiency and productivity, benefitting their economies and people, and move to a knowledge-based economy,” said Bindu N Lohani, vice-president for knowledge management and sustainable development at the ADB.

The index ranks Japan and South Korea as the two countries in the region that are most efficient at turning creative inputs into tangible innovations.

Among the nine Asean nations included, Laos was ranked the most efficient country in Asean for turning the building blocks of creativity into tangible innovations that benefit their economies.

According to the index, Laos is ranked the 9th country out of the total 24 economies in the region, as well as the top in Asean. Singapore is ranked 10th, Indonesia 12th, and Malaysia 13th. Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar and Cambodia are ranked 15th, 16th, 18th, 22nd and 24th, respectively. The top seven in the index are Japan, Finland, South Korea, the United States, Taiwan, New Zealand and Hong Kong (China).

Creative productivity is an important factor in knowledge-based economic development and the new index gives policymakers a unique tool to assess how to best foster innovation and creativity. While measures will differ by country, policies that make it easier to set up businesses and create flexible labour markets would benefit everyone, as would greater investment in education, skills, information and communications technologies, and Internet access, the ADB said.

In a report titled “Innovative Asia: Advancing the Knowledge-Based Economy”, ADB noted that emerging economies will, however, find it impossible to continue their success under the same growth models used over the last few decades, as technology accelerates and changes the ways countries produce and trade. 

With rising wages across the region, most Asian economies stand to lose their comparative advantage for labour-intensive manufacturing and additionally will also feel the pressure exerted on increasingly scarce and costly energy resources. As developed economies move towards knowledge-based growth, Asian developing countries, to sustain growth, are required to seek different approaches to economic growth and progress, especially for those aspiring to move from the middle-income to high-income level.

According to the World Bank and ADB, Myanmar scored the lowest points in the Knowledge Economy Index, among more than 20 Asia Pacific countries.

Myanmar was also at the bottom of the Economic Incentive and Institutional Regime Subindex, indicating the bureaucratic process and weak institutions to incentivise economic activities. 

It is also at the bottom of the Education and Skills Subindex, suggesting it has the lowest ability to build up higher-level skills in the workforce. 

It also had the lowest scores in the area of higher education and skills as a source of competitiveness.

The report also noted that by 2020 in Asia, it is estimated there will be a shortage of 38 million to 40 million highly skilled (college educated) workers, a shortage of 45 million medium-skilled (secondary education) workers and a surplus of 90 million to 95 million low-skilled workers.