KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will be home to the United Nations Technology Innovation Lab and the region's first entrepreneurship internet radio station.
The announcement was made by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak who said the initiatives were part of the nation's Futurise Centre to be set up under the Budget 2018.
"Today, I am happy to announce that the Futurise Centre will also house the first United Nations Technology Innovation Lab in South East Asia and region's first entrepreneurship internet radio station eFM," he said when launching the Global Entrepreneurship Community Summit 2017 today (Dec 12).
He said the Futurise Centre will also serve as a test bed for the development of national regulatory sandboxes for policy experimentation and innovative ideas and business models.
He said focus of the initiatives will be on regulatory of smart cities, agrotech, digital health, clean energy and mobility.
"If we want this emerging technologies to enter the highly-regulated, but also highly- inpactful sectors of health, finances, energy and transport, then we need to help entrepreneurs and scientists to better understand the regulatory framwork," he added.
Najib also announced the launch of the Social Impact Exchange or SIX.
"SIX will be the focal point for funding social purpose organisations and their projects.
"This initiative will be jointly implemented by Inovasi Malaysia and MaGIC under the National Blue Ocean Strategy ambit," he said.
He noted that initiatives announced through the Global Entrepreneurship Community (GEC) Summit last year had since bore fruit.
"Fifty intiatives came out of GEC labs, of which 15 projects are expected to generate at least RM100mil in value over the next three years," he said.
He also said that 44 companies had procured some RM3mil from impact driven entreprises since September last year.
Some 15,000 participants from 89 countries are taking part in the two-day summit to explore and promote innovative ideas.
