Smart city building breakthrough in new period - Final

Final part:  An epoch-making choice

Over 24 years of construction and development, Binh Duong has gained some brilliant achievements in all fields. In light of the digitalization era, the province is more determined to innovate  to continue becoming a bright spot in the process of gaining wealth and transforming into a smart and modern city.

Provincial leaders and enterprises learn about a model of smart city planning area.

 The key to success

Regarding Innovation Region and Binh Duong Smart City Project, many leading experts on technological application in state governance and enterprises consider this as a promising project. The project promises to create a prerequisite to evelate socio-economic development of the province to a new height. Associate Professor, Dr. Dang My Chau, Singapore - Philippines and Thailand Regional Director of Topica Education Group, said that this was a right decision of Binh Duong. According to Ms. Dang, catching the innovation trend and moving towards economic groups containing a high concentration of gray matter, such as science and technology, is a smart and epoch-making choice.

Dr. Dang gave analysis about the choice and development orientation of other countries and regions. Specifically, most of these focus on socio-economic growth towards automation, application of science and technology into production and business activities and state governance system. Experts summarized them into a convincing concept, that is "Culture of innovation and creativity". In fact, this culture has been applied by a number of large cororations in Vietnam, has fully exploited potential, strengths and creativity of staff.

In order to arouse a culture of innovation and creativity, the province has introduced some concrete and practical action programs in recent years. In particular, the highlight is the introduction of Community Initiatives and Start-up Support Center of Binh Duong Province (BIIC) at the end of 2019. Up to now, after more than a year, BIIC has made great efforts in finding, selecting, training and developing new factors with potential for development and diverse application in fields of science and technology, incubating innovative start-ups for the province.

People are centered

Along with an open policy, creating favorable conditions and openness in administrative administration to attract investment of manufacturing enterprises in the direction of scientific and technological application, the province directed relevant departments and organizations to encourage people, especially young people, to participate in the creative start-up movement. Namely, provincial leaders assigned Department of Science and Technology, Department of Education - Training, Alliance of Science and Technology Associations, Provincial Youth Union, and universities, colleges, high schools, junior high schools etc. in the province to actively hold contests and contests on scientific and technical creation. These contests attracted the participation of a large number of young people and many topics and products that have been evaluated for good applicability, experimentation and development prospects in the market.

Contests, such as Binh Duong Startup Innovation, Technical Innovation, Youth Creation etc. initially aroused aspirations and passion for scientific and technical creativity among young people. Specificially, by the beginning of 2021, the whole province had tens of thousands of participants to submit products, topics and ideas to participate in the above competitions. In addition to the quantity and quality of products, topics and ideas, it is also enhanced and practical application after each organization.

Pham Thi Xuan Truc, representative of F-Print Care 4.0 project team, the topic won second prize of Binh Duong Startup Innovation 2020 contest, said that despite being affected by the COVID-19, F-print Care 4.0 group had their first orders. By providing an effective solution to the market, we believe that F-Print Care 4.0 would soon create a sales breakthrough in the near future, if the team continues to persevere with their project and have a promotional strategy, target a right market segment and reach customers in an intelligent and effective way.

Nguyen Xuan Ngan, Permanent Vice Chairman of Provincial Alliance of Science and Technology Associations, said that after many years of organizing scientific and technical creative contests, this union selected and collaborated with agencies and branches to support groups of idea and projects to be realized and bring products onto market. Initially, a number of projects have attracted the attention of consumers and directly helped individuals and teams gain a stable income source to continue their innovation and creativity career, effectively contributing to the smart city construction of the province.

As the key to opening Innovation Region with a knowledge economy, the Triple Helix model has received much attention of provincial leadership since the first days of building and developing Binh Duong smart city project. This model applied in Binh Duong is to facilitate and formalize the close cooperation between the government, businesses, institutes and schools in the province, and to flexibly link with other regions. In this cooperative relationship, the State plays the leading role; enterprises, institutes and schools take their respective responsibilities in each area. This model creates a large input to create a common long-term vision and establish appropriate strategies and action programs, boosting Binh Duong's dynamic and creative development.

 Reported by Dinh Thang - Translated by Ngoc Huynh