Indonesia's Policies, Measures, and Mechanisms to Strengthen Innovation and Technology Transfer

Abstract

An improved innovation capacity of this sector will significantly contribute to the economy growth and accelerate poverty alleviation. Indonesian government has introduced various policies, program and schemes to strengthen its national innovation capacity. On transfer of technology initiatives, there is an increasing trend in many R&D institution and higher education institutions to systematically develop their capacity to be better service providers to industry. A growing numbers of Technology Business Incubators (TBIs) amongst other is aimed at promoting the development of newly technology-based firms/SMEs. Currently there are around 50 technology and business incubators in Indonesia. Likewise, there is an increasing number of developments of Science and Technology Park. In these two types of intermediaries, TBIs and Science and Technology Parks most of them are still in its infancy stages. However, it is interesting to note that there is an encouraging trend in the development of these TBIs and STPs, i.e., an increasing number of TBIs and STPs are initiated by private sectors. TBIs, can become an effective technology transfer mechanism for R&D institution and higher education institutions to further develop the growth of newly technology-based SMEs. Yet, some challenges on this transfer of technology remain.

These, among other, include: a need for a sustainable supports to intermediaries until they have minimum capacity to stand on its own, human resources capacity building, and more importantly creation of a conducive ecosystem to new entrepreneurs to access and adopt technology innovation. On national innovation system (NIS/SINAS) strengthening, Indonesia has taken a systematical approach by introducing and implementing various policies and programs. Policies include, for example, inclusion of NIS as a development priority in the mid-term national development plan (RPJM) and institutionalization of policy making body through the establishment of National Committee for Innovation (KIN) who directly responsible to the President of the Republic of Indonesia. Further, a number of initiatives and programs on strengthening of regional innovation system (SIDA) have also been introduced. This includes strengthening capacity of local governments in the development of SIDA in selected regions. In 2011 the government has launched a new initiative, i.e. Master Plan of Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesia Economic Development (MP3EI) 2011-2025 where strengthening national human resources capability and science & technology is one of the three strategies. Implementation of this MP3EI is formulated in the so-called 1 747 innovation initiatives proposed by National Innovation Committee. Finally, this paper proposes two proposals on Study and Workshop on Effective Financing Strategy to Accelerate Technology Transfer to Tec-Based SMEs and Conference and Forum of Asia Pacific Science and Technology Park.

Keywords: Innovation policy, Innovation system, SMEs, Technology Transfer, Indonesia