UNS – “Innovating or losing” may represent the importance of innovation in the disruption era today, especially for the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (UMKM).
Hence, the Study Center of Cooperatives and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Assistance (PSP-KUMKM) Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) Surakarta conducted an international conference “The 7th UNS SME Summit & Awards 2018”. The conference entitled “Enhancing Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Competitiveness Based on Creative Economy in Innovation Disruption” was held at UNS Inn on Thursday (11/10/2018).
The invited speakers were Ishak Bin Yussof (The head of ICD UKM Malaysia), Tai Wan Ping (Cheng Siu University, Taiwan), Warapon Boonsuthip (Department of Food Science and Technology, Thailand), and Retno Tanding (The lecturer of Faculty of Economy and Business UNS).
Talking deeply about UMKM products innovation in disruption era, Retno explained that Japan was still one of the countries having the highest innovation improvement in Asia in 1991 until 2011 based on the World Bank data.
“Malaysia has an experience in improving the amount of innovations. Then, Japan and Korea are still the highest countries in innovation improvement,” Retno explained while showing some graphic data on her presentation.
Meanwhile, based on the graphic, Indonesia is still left behind by the two countries. Actually, in this era, companies are demanded to be braver in discovering new idea in order to adapt with the changing world. One of the efforts is utilizing the technology potency.
Warapon described how food products will change in the future due to the technology development. He said that, in the future, there will be 3D food printer where every family can produce their own food and even arrange the ingredients and its nutrition.
“You can program this printer with specific ingredients, nutrition, and designs. You can print steak, noddle, or other foods,” Warapon said.
Utilizing technology in producing the innovation of food production has been being conducted by a reputable food company, Nestle. Nestle combines artificial intelligent (AI) with DNA in order to produce healthy food that is needed by the people. Warapon mentioned that every individual has different physical condition so it needs different foods too. If the food fits to the body, the health condition will be good. As the result, human being predictably can live longer which is more than 100 years.
In case of that, Retno said that UMKM also can collaborate with university. Ishak then told his experience as the head of ICD UKM in Malaysia. He said that when an industry comes to trouble, university can conduct a research funded by the government, then the industry can get the solution.
Ishak also recommended that the curriculum of the university or other educational institutions are always set based on the need of industry. It matters because the graduates can directly adjust with the rapid industrial development.
According to Tai Wan Ping, in the future, many Taiwan’s companies want to collaborate with Indonesian’s. Moreover, the new regulation of Taiwan government “New Southward Policy” authors their investment improvement in Southeast countries, including Indonesia.
Meanwhile, the keynote speaker, Ari Yuliano Gema, recommended that UMKM need to register the Intellectual Property Right (HAKI) in order not to cause brand controversy because many innovations will appear massively in this disruption era.
“There are 8.2 million creative economy companies in Indonesia, but only 11% that have already register the HAKI. Most of them are unaware of its importance because of the expensiveness of the registration fee. However, we have fully funded HAKI registration for UMKM. Hopefully, it can increase up to 50%,” the head of HAKI said to journalists. humas.red-uns/Imr/Dty