Enhancing Innovation Policy in South-East Asia

The WIPO Singapore Office (WSO) contributed to the innovative training programme on “Adapting Intellectual Property to promote innovation and creativity in new technologies” that was organized by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Around 50 participants from 10 South-East Asian nations (plus representatives of the ASEAN Secretariat) joined the multi-session training course.

The session topic of, “What is a Creative/Innovative Society - Developing Public Policies to Promote Creativity and Innovation” saw the WSO share information on some of the tools WIPO has developed to assist policy makers formulate and evaluate innovation policy.

Primarily the focus was on WIPO’s Global Innovation Index (GII) and its usefulness as a tool for policy makers. The GII uses 80 different indicators to determine “innovation” – everything from creative outputs such as the number of feature films produced/mn population to ease of obtaining credit and the percentage of science and engineering graduates.

Other speakers in the session included representatives from the Ministry of Law (Singapore), Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and the Asia Toy & Play Association. The result was an insightful discussion on how policy makers can better drive policy change to enhance innovation and creativity in their country.