Mahadhir Aziz: The Futurise Gel To Get Startups Going

The pursuit of greater economic productivity requires accelerated efforts in cultivating collaborative innovation in the country.

Mahadhir Aziz, Acting Chief Executive Officer of Futurise Centre in Cyberjaya weighs in on the potential of emerging technology enablers in accelerating innovation and how Futurise plays a role in shaping the future of innovation in Malaysia.

Introduced during the Launch of Cyberjaya as a Smart City on 31 May 2017, Futurise Centre serves as a hub for corporations, universities and entrepreneurs to converge and develop future innovations.

“Futurise was launched to specifically look at three things - innovation, regulations and also commercialisation of activities,” says Aziz.

Futurise aims to become a one-stop center for innovators to develop an idea or technology, find the right regulations for it to be monitored or legalised in the country and bring it to market or commercialisation.

“In Malaysia, there are a lot of startups that have begun their journey much earlier. The problem for these small companies is they do not have a platform to test out their technology and to work together with other agencies that could benefit from developing that technology.

"This is where we think Futurise can play a part," says Aziz.

“We want to be able to create pilot programs of the new technology and innovations. This plays into the proposition that Cyberjaya is to be huge testbed for all these new technologies. Futurise puts this all together by bringing in specific industries that want to test out their ideas and technologies.”

Looking forward, Futurise sees that the main goal to strive for is to be the gel that brings all startups, industries and ministries together to help foster innovation and enable more local champions.

Watch the full interview with Mahadhir Aziz below: