About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

Innovation policymakers today control huge budgets and are tasked with tackling challenges as important as the current climate crisis and supporting the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Having a deep understanding of their world is essential if governments are to support policymakers effectively in executing their role.

Through the Global Innovation Policy Accelerator programme, we seek to have a deep understanding of the world of innovation policymakers, their context, needs, challenges, and activities, so that we can help them develop innovation policies that match society’s ambitions.

We have been working with policymakers across Latin America, India, South East Asia and Brazil, with Egypt, Kenya, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa recently joining our network. Through our work, we’ve learned a lot about the innovation policy systems in these countries and we’ll be publishing country reports about all of them. Read our previous reports on India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia.

In these reports, we highlight what we’ve learned about the challenges and priorities of innovation policymakers working in these systems.

Here, we provide a summary of a more detailed report on Vietnam that you can download in full as a pdf (above). It is the culmination of many conversations and interviews with different policymakers in the Vietnamese innovation system, across government departments.

This article has quotes from those conversations that we have kept anonymous. We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the insights that follow. Note that the original review and research was undertaken in 2018, and many facts and figures date from that point. We consider the main findings to still be relevant in understanding and interpreting the Vietnamese science, technology and innovation system.

Authors

Florence Engasser

Florence Engasser

Florence Engasser

Senior Foresight Analyst

Florence was a senior foresight analyst within Nesta’s Discovery Hub, which aims to create a link between Nesta’s current portfolio and our pipeline of future work.

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Benjamin Reid

Benjamin Reid

Benjamin Reid

Head of International Innovation - Development Programmes

Benjamin was head of the International Innovation team within Nesta's Policy and Research division.

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Silvia Pau

Silvia Pau

Silvia Pau

Assistant Programme Manager, A Fairer Start mission

Silvia is an Assistant Programme Manager.

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Paulina Gonzalez-Ortega

Paulina Gonzalez-Ortega

Paulina Gonzalez-Ortega

Design Lead, International Innovation

Paulina was the Design Lead for the Global Innovation Policy Accelerator, a 14-country collaborative development programme for senior innovation policymakers.

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Anna Schlimm

Anna Schlimm

Anna Schlimm

Learning Experience Designer, Global Innovation Policy Accelerator

Anna was a Learning Experience Designer for the Global Innovation Policy Accelerator.

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Nathan Kably

Nathan Kably

Nathan Kably

Senior Strategy Analyst

Nathan worked on the design and delivery of Nesta's strategy

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