“You need to understand who you are and who you want to attract and be focused on the kind of talent you want to attract.” This is one of the key takeaway points from the ongoing Bhutan Innovation Forum in Paro. Day two’s panel on attracting global talents and fostering entrepreneurship saw international and local panellists discuss how Bhutan can attract global and retain local talents to foster entrepreneurship without changing the core values of the country.
Talking about how Bhutan can attract global and retain local talents, Managing Director of Google For Education John Vamvaktis said it is important for Bhutan to reflect on its strengths and values and map them to the entities and individuals that the country wants to attract.
He said that while Bhutan has so many strengths and the desire to advance in the right way it is important to do so without changing the values of the country.
“There are enormous amount of technologies to make the environment more welcoming for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial companies. I think as I mentioned before, we need to think about how to reduce friction in the system. We want the least amount of friction while keeping with the ethos of the country so that we do not change everything.”
Similarly, Thinley Choden from the Centre for Sustainable Studies said that at a time when the entire world is looking for talent, it is important that Bhutan attract talents that create jobs and enhance the values of the country.
“It would really help if the government can come up with a special, whether you call it entrepreneurship visa or a new innovation visa whereby you attract talent from all over the world. You make a global call and say you have what we are looking for in terms of what kind of sectors, what size of enterprises, what kind of innovations we’re looking at.”
In addition, Jack Liang, the moderator for the panel along with another panellist who runs a news organisation in Thailand said Bhutanese can attract talent by leveraging technologies such as social media platforms to foster entrepreneurship.
Jack Liang of Global AI said “I came here last time for National Day and I just made some clips of National Day and those clips got over a million views. So, the question is how can we turn those views into impact and potentially profit? A few days ago, I went to do yoga upstairs here and this woman who is teaching yoga in this beautiful backdrop and she was teaching me a few poses on how to balance and to align I was so impressed and I just thought if only she films this and could potentially share it as an expertise, people from the west like myself would probably pay for it.”
Nakarin Wanakijpaibul, CEO & Editor-in-Chief of The Standard said “Content is king and presentation is queen. So, you have to balance these two elements. Create content that is unique, like your uniform, your forest, and sustainability, GNH. If you grab and catch this uniqueness and then spread it out to the audience I think it would be valuable and interesting.”
Meanwhile, Sangay Tshering, the President of Loden Foundation, a Civil Society Organisation engaging with local entrepreneurs, said the existing ecosystem of entrepreneurship in the country is not strong enough adding that there is confusion when it comes to attracting global talent and fostering entrepreneurship.
“For example, in the 12th-Five-Year Plan, we had the CSO flagship programme under which SMEs and startup was put together. But these are very two different things. And why I say this is startup is something where, you have a business and then if you pumping enough money, you can actually have, it’s scalable, meaning it can grow really big and it can actually cater to a global market where whereas, small and medium enterprise could be catering nationally.”
He added that policies including alternative financing beyond FDI will be instrumental in attracting talent and fostering entrepreneurship culture.
Bhutan Innovation Forum seeks to strategically attract skilled professionals for Bhutan to diversify its economy, innovate within key sectors such as tourism, agriculture, and technology, and strengthen its position in the global knowledge economy.
Phub Gyem, Pangbisa in Paro
