INNOVATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF BUSINESS INCUBATORS

BIPP is about to launch the first call for proposals.

Background: Vietnam has made significant progress in its socio-economic development but despite these achievements, the growth process has encountered serious problems that threaten national competitiveness.

The  rapid  growth of  the  Vietnamese economy resulting from  the  ‘easy wins’ achieved by  the dynamism and flexibility of its emerging private sector enterprises no longer exist. Factor- and investment-led growth must give way to innovation-led growth to a greater extent than in the past if growth is to continue and if that growth is to be sustainable.

However, Vietnam’s limited technological readiness is a significant negative factor for the growth of competitive enterprises in Vietnam.  This is not only in terms of the use, adoption and adaptation of technology but also for innovation and research and development initiatives, which are critical for sustainable and competitive economic development.

The BIPP (Innovation and Development of Business Incubators Policy Project) strategy is therefore designed to:

           Address both the level of understanding of the need for change and the nature of that change by supporting the MoST to improved awareness of international best practice in technology transfer, innovation and the incubation of science and technology enterprises. This is expected to lead to improvements in the policy and regulatory framework to encourage the establishment and operation of both technology business incubators and science and technology enterprises..

                   Pilot new initiatives in the operation of technology business incubation in two key locations (Hanoi and HCMC) with the objective of identifying best practice and learning experiences which can be fed back into further policy and regulatory development (Results Area 2).

                  Pilot a support fund to provide assistance to technology business incubators to improve the quality and range of services that they provide their tenants and to support incubator clients with essential elements of incubation and pre-incubation support (Results Area 3). Best practice and learning experience will again be fed back into Results Area 1 to support further policy and regulatory development.

                 Establish a high effective monitoring system that can capture the achievements of Results Areas 1, 2 and 3 and ensure that lessons learned are fed back regularly and reliably into improved policy and regulatory development and reform.

The project has duration of 5 years from 2014 and an overall budget of €4,400,000 of which the Belgian contribution is €4,000,000.

The project partner is the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam.

The project will be overseen by a joint steering committee co-chaired by MoST and BTC and managed on a day-to-day basis by a PMU headed by a MOST-appointed director supported, inter alia, by co-coordinators appointed respectively by MOST and BTC.

Resulting from this support initiative is the current InnoFund and the Grants which will be available there under.  

The InnoFund is a grant scheme provided through the BIPP to carry out capacity building support in incubators and incubator start-ups. With the support of the Belgian Development Cooperation, InnoFund will provide capacity building support in incubation and pre-incubation to:

           Researchers, other individuals and enterprises which are the clients (pre-incubation, virtual incubation, incubation) of new or existing technology business incubators (Window 1)

           Established technology business incubators (Window 2)

InnoFund will be initiated as a pilot programme and aim at the pilot scheme being successful at which time the Government will consider how it can be established on a more permanent basis. InnoFund is to be operated on a competitive basis and only the projects that best satisfy the selection criteria will be awarded support.

For the InnoFund itself the long term aim is to have this self-sustaining on at least a cost recovery basis.   oGeneral bjective of InnoFund is to help increase the competitiveness of the Vietnamese economy through improved commercialization of national research and development.

The specific objective of InnoFund is to pilot a financial support mechanism for promoting technological incubation in Vietnam through elements:

           Call for proposals;

           Selection  of  successful  applicants  and  provision  of grant support  (through a Grant Agreement);

           Implementation the grant support;

           Monitoring and evaluation the grant support;

           Completion the grant support.

           Withdraw lessons learned from the process of the grant support.

The InnoFund will operate with two distinct windows with separate objectives:

The objectives by window are:

Window 1

Improved transfer of the innovative concepts of Vietnamese researchers and inventors into viable commercial products and enterprises

Window 2

Strengthened capacity of technology business incubators in Vietnam to offer the full range of services that their clients need and, through providing such services, become financial self-sustainable

The Support will take the form of a financial grant, limited to fund consultancy support (national and/or international expertise) to provide specific support requested in an application. All supported projects must have a consultancy support element but not be limited to this in total. As requested in the application form, details of specific components need to be itemised.

Other  support  may be  requested  with  the  costs  of  items  essential  for  the  pre-commercial development of products – such as raw materials for prototype development, hire or, in extraordinary circumstances, purchase of essential equipment for prototype development, costs of testing prototypes by national and/or international standards bodies, etc.  The non-consultancy support element of support will be limited to be determined on a case by case basis.

All support will be provided in the form of a cash grant. Although provided as cash grant any procurement must follow Vietnamese government practices.

Investment in commercial production equipment and for recurrent costs (as opposed to that needed for prototype development) will not be eligible for support.

In order to have a high prospect of selection a project must:

           Be innovative, high quality and generate knowledge in a particular industrial or scientific field which is likely to have commercial value.

           Demonstrate expected outcomes in which the likely commercial benefits are clearly demonstrated to be proportionate to the cost of the support requested.

           Demonstrate that the concept has an encompassing business plan and its implementation will involve private sector representation to ensure relevance to the needs of enterprises. While business plans can be in many forms and be very complicated taking considerable time to perfect, for the purpose of applications under these grants the basic necessity under a submitted Business Plan (BP) as applicable is to demonstrate some linkage with eventual financial viability.