The Take Away from the Creative Economy Conference in Chang Mai:IT and Software are Among Thailand’s Best Hopes for Sustainable Growth By Varunee Ratchatapattanakul
BANGKOK, March 9, 2010—It was inspiring to be surrounded by so many people with a passion for information technologies and innovations at Northern Thailand’s Creative Economy – Opportunities and Challenges in the IT Sector - organized by the U.S. consulate here last week. This suggests that Thailand’s Creative Economy truly has a foundation for growth.
Among those with an eye to the future, there is nearly unanimous consensus that Thailand needs an innovative information technology industry to succeed in a global economy and, according to keen observers of the Thai economy, to be one of Thailand’s best hopes as the country is facing critical issues; for example, those at the Map Ta Phut Industrial Park, from being the agriculture- and manufacturing-based economy. Indeed, providing the country’s IT sector with the environment it needs to succeed, in addition to Thai Khem Khaeng stimulus package and creative economy spending, is a proven recipe for economic success.
First and foremost, with all of its recent investments in the Creative Economy, Thailand needs to ensure that inspired IT businesses and IT entrepreneurs have effective protection and enforcement of the intellectual property rights they need as they innovate, start businesses, create jobs and, hopefully one day, build highly successful IT products. Too often people forget that homegrown Thai products are among the most frequently pirated. This needs to change.
Some of the attendees of the conference were obviously bursting with good ideas for innovations. They deserve the effective protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights as a way to elevate incentives and rewards because their innovations will likely help the Thai government achieve its stated goal of making the creative economy account for 20 percent of GDP by the year 2012. Effective protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights are a key platform for creativity. How does Thailand expect to see the successful Creative Economy unless this platform has been considered as an essential part of the Creative Economy?. In recent years, Thailand’s protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights under Copyright Act B.E. 2537 for the software industry as an essential part of the country’s IT sector has improved thanks to the diligence of Department of Intellectual Property (DIP), Economic and Cyber Crime Division (ECD) under Central Investigation Bureau (CIB), State Prosecutor, and Intellectual Property & International Trade Court (IP&IT Court).
Apart from the effective protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights, there are other related issues that will strengthen the country’s IT sector. One of those that was also mentioned in this conference is Information Security. This issue may be one of tremendous opportunities and challenges in the IT sector that Thailand’s IT or software related government agencies should look ahead for in the years coming as businesses and governments are increasingly under attack by a host of malicious cyber predators. In addition to the technology-neutral promotion of the country’s software industry consisting of commercial and open source software on a neutral basis, rather than focusing only on open source software, Software Industry Promotion Agency (SIPA) might take the opportunity that Thailand will be a host of Information Security policy meeting in March to show nations that Information Security is one of the top priorities to strengthen the IT sector and support the Creative Economy.
What became most apparent after spending two days in Chang Mai is that the IT sector consisting of three essential parts i.e. human resources, software and infrastructure should be supported with finance, education, policy and legal protection. The IT sector is notably progressive, environmentally friendly and can generate good jobs and scalable creative economic growth in the blink of an eye. Now is the time for Thailand to power its Creative Economy aspirations with IT.
(Varunee Ratchatapattanakul is Thailand Consultant of Business Software Alliance. The Creative Economy Conference was organized by the U.S. Consulate General in Chang Mai in collaboration with the Chang Mai provincial government, the Software Industry Promotion Agency, the Chang Mai Chamber of Commerce and Chang Mai University.)