Participating in the Forum, in the Finnish sidewere the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Republic of Finland Pekka Hyvonen and representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Pasi Hellman while in the Vietnamese side were Minister of Science and Technology Hoàng Văn Phong and Deputy Minister of Science and TechnologyChu Ngọc Anh. Especially attending the ceremony were representative ambassadors from diplomactic agencies of the Czech Republic, Belarus, Myanma, Hungary, French Republic, Canada, NewZeland and United Kingdom; managers, scientists and representatives from some Vietnamese enterprises.
OIF has the address at http://www.oif.gov.vn; http://www.oif.vn. OIF’s executing agency is the State Agency for Technology Innovation (SATI) under Ministry of Science and Technology. OIF’s main objective is to create the environement for State management agencies, enterprises (especially S&T entperiese, young bussineemen and enterpreners of Vientam and Finland), sicientists, independent experts and donors ….to meet and exchange experience and look for cooperation opportunities in order to together promote technology use and renovation in production and business activities.
Delivering the opening speech in the ceremony, Minister Hoàng Văn Phong expressed his pleasure and honor to open the information portal for the open innovation forum together with AmbassadorPekka Hyvonen. The Minister shared that over the past year, with the whole nation’s efforts, Vietnam has achieved remarble results of the social and economic development, moving the country out of poor countries with the income per capita of more than VND 20 million. There have been significant contributions of S&T activities to achieve that success. For the new development period, with objectives of speeding up the industrialization towards modernization directions and ensuring to become a middle-income country by 2020’s, S&T activities will be promoted strongly and in a synchronized manner in all three fields: research organizations, enterprise community and State policy-making agencies. Through that, the national innovation system will be improved towards directions that the legal frameowrk is completed and system of national targeted programs is established systematically. Especially S&T enteprises are focused as key forces of technology innovation, then new products with new fuctions will be created with added values for Vietnamese goods.
Ministry Hoàng Văn Phong emphasired that Finland has been a tyical example in the workld for developing the country by S&T. Finland’s miraculous achivements have become good and useful experience for countries with development aspirations as Vietnam. Currently, Vietnam has been confident to start a new development period in which S&T and innovation are motivations and breakthrough solutions. Finland has been one of leading countries in sharing precious experience with Vietnam. This has been showed specifically and actively through the fact that the Governemt of two countries have committed to implement the Partnership Program oninnovation for 2 recent years and especially the opening of the information portal for Open Innovation Forum today.
Minister Hoàng Văn Phong highly appreciated and welcomed sincere efforts and commitments of members of the Forum Manamgenet Board and Vietnamese and Finland experts in the development of the forum. On this occasion the Minister also expressed his thanks for Ambassador Pekka Hyvonen and colleagues for their efforts in promoting S&T cooperation between Vietnam and Finland to develop more and more and become the friendship cooperative picture between the two nations. At the same time, the Minister also thanked the Finish Mistry of Foreing Affaris to always be the leading in creating every development opportunity for Vientamese partners to participate programs to learnand share development experience which Finland has already passed and wished OIF to be successful and developed and become a reliable address for innovators.
Ambassador Pekka Hyvonen expressed his hope that the Forum would become an useful tool for Vietnamese companies in partnership relations among enterprises, between universiteis and foreign partners to create new products and services for the market. OIF would become an useful tool for discussing about Governemtn’s policies in order to support businessmen with creative ideas and support professional staff to learn more about innovation.