The National Innovation Agency (NIA) urges political parties to give the use of innovation top priority to solve problems in order to increase competitiveness, reduce corruption and climate change while continuing to push the policy to build a "Thailand Innovation" brand.
Innovation is key to driving economic growth and improving the quality of life and equality, according to Pun-arj Chairatana, the agency's executive director.
"We see in the ongoing election campaigns that political parties don't mention an 'innovation policy' but focus on populist policies," he said.
In developed countries, such as the US during the last election campaign, both former president Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden highlighted the priority of fostering the country as a leader in technology and innovation.
France's President Emmanuel Macron set up an Innovaton Fund, Japan recently focused on creating more local startups, while Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also updated the country's innovation-driven policies.
"I hope the new government would invest more in innovation over the next four years as this is the time it would take to make a fruitful result by uplifting Thailand to the top 30 of the Global Innovation Index by 2030 from the ranking of 43rd [as of 2021]," said Mr Pun-Arj.
Innovation is a global agenda and many countries are pushing innovation as it adds value, bolsters competitiveness and drives economic growth while solving social problems and reducing climate change, he said.
He said Thailand's innovation ranking has not improved significantly over the past few years even though policymakers emphasise the importance of innovation.
The NIA still faces budget constraints and a lack of resources. The agency receives US$10 million per year but other innovation agencies in some countries receive up to $100 million per year.
"The NIA has been promoting the importance of innovation awareness at every level and ensures that innovation is not limited to Bangkok but stresses building innovation hubs in regional zones such as Khon Kaen and southern areas to increase the equality of access to innovation," he said.
"We have to build more inno- vation-making firms to create a critical mass of employment of the future workforce," he added.
Thailand needs to build an innovation ecosystem that helps facilitate partnership between large firms and government on joint R&D innovation with transparency and measures of key performance indicators to empower large enterprises to be global companies and encourage them to work with innovation-based SMEs and startups, said Mr Pun-Arj.
