KUALA LUMPUR: Universities, the government, and the private sector must work more closely to turn homegrown research and technologies into global success stories, says Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
The Deputy Prime Minister said while Malaysia has built a strong base in global supply chains in key sectors such as semiconductors, many locally developed technologies faced challenges in securing industry partners or capital between research validation and commercialisation.
“The problem is not always the quality of the research. More often, it is the lack of the right partner, capital or pathway to scale.
“This is where government, universities, industry and investors must work more closely together,” he said when officiating the University Research and Innovation Investment Summit 2026 (Uriis 2026) at the World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur here on yesterday.
Ahmad Zahid, who is also the Rural and Regional Development Minister, said Malaysia needed to move from a heavy reliance on public grants towards a broader capital ecosystem involving private investors and industry partners to scale promising ideas into marketable products.
He also called for research to focus more on national challenges such as food security, healthcare, energy and productivity.
Rural communities, including those in his Bagan Datuk constituency, could serve as testing grounds for innovations in areas such as digital healthcare, renewable energy and smart logistics, he said.
Citing the Global Innovation Index 2025, Ahmad Zahid said Malaysia ranked 34th among 139 economies but continued to perform better in innovation inputs than in translating research into economic outputs.
Malaysia, he added, must also move beyond developing talent towards building homegrown technology enterprises, aligning with national targets to attract RM500bil in investments and nurture 60,000 highly skilled local engineers by 2030.
“We should not only be proud when something is ‘Made in Malaysia’. We should aim to see more technologies invented in Malaysia, and increasingly, more intellectual property and enterprises owned by Malaysians,” he said.
Ahmad Zahid urged the Higher Education Ministry, other ministries, universities, industry partners and investors to follow through on technologies emerging from Uriis 2026, describing the national ambition towards 2030 as “Create, Commercialise, Own”.
Uriis 2026 serves as a platform connecting university research capabilities with industry needs, investment and the market to accelerate commercialisation.
The summit brings together researchers, universities, start-ups, industry players, government agencies and investors in an ecosystem that enables potential technology, expertise and solutions to be evaluated and matched with actual needs of the industry.
