With this approach, many countries have decisively pursued mastery of core technologies through national strategic programmes for science and technology development, investment incentives, ecosystem building and market creation.
For example, the Japanese Government has rolled out numerous programmes to support technology research in parallel with product development, providing funding for pilot testing, offering sandbox mechanisms, infrastructure and real-world testing sites. After the pilot phase, viable technologies continue to receive support for deployment through public procurement orders or public service programmes, enabling technologies to move quickly into operation. In the United States, the Government often plays the role of the first customer through technology procurement programmes, particularly in defence, healthcare and infrastructure. Many major U.S. technology companies have grown out of these very procurement orders before expanding into civilian and global markets.
Meanwhile, China has invested heavily in core technology research while creating a domestic market through large-scale national deployment programmes. Once a market exists, enterprises have sufficient output to continue investing in mastering technology. The lesson here is that the State does not replace enterprises, but plays the role of market creator, institutional architect and builder of strategic confidence.
In Viet Nam, the Government has recently issued a national science, technology and innovation programme to develop strategic technology products for immediate priority implementation, with the goal that by 2030 Viet Nam will research, master the design, integration, manufacturing, testing and application of six strategic technology products, including: large language models and Vietnamese-language virtual assistants; edge-processing AI cameras; autonomous mobile robots; 5G mobile network systems and equipment; blockchain network infrastructure and application layers for traceability and tokenised assets; and unmanned aerial vehicles. To achieve this, the programme sets out a series of tasks and solutions ranging from institutional improvement and research support to market development and human resource development. In addition, implementation funding will be ensured from the State budget under decentralised arrangements, within the total allocation of 15% of overall State budget expenditure for science and technology activities serving strategic technology research.
However, innovation always moves ahead of legal frameworks, while investment levels for new technologies are very high. Therefore, the business community strongly hopes that Viet Nam will soon apply sandbox mechanisms and pilot support similar to those adopted by some of the countries mentioned above, with flexibility in selecting enterprises and pilot locations, in order to reduce risks and shorten the time from research to mastery and practical application of technologies. More importantly, it is necessary to create an initial market for strategic technology products in conjunction with the formation of domestic supply chains.
Accordingly, projects using State budget funds should prioritise products whose technologies are mastered by Vietnamese entities, while applying mechanisms for public procurement and assignment of technology tasks. Once the market reaches sufficient scale, domestic software and hardware supply chains will naturally take shape, creating favourable conditions for enterprises to grow and master technologies within a short period of time.
