Malaysia a pioneer country in World Startup Wiki project

Malaysia a pioneer country in World Startup Wiki project: Page 2 of 2

By Gabey Goh August 15, 2014

Malaysia Startup Wiki

When the call was issued via startup networks for contributors and volunteers to help create wikis of their respective ecosystems, the country with one of the strongest responses, according to Gai, was Malaysia.

More than two dozen people were involved with the creation and populating of the Malaysian startup wiki section. They range from entrepreneurs and community leaders to representatives of government agencies tasked with spurring the ecosystem.

It is also why Malaysia, in addition to the Philippines, is one of the pioneer countries to be featured on the homepage of the World Startup Wiki platform. To ensure the accuracy of information posted, the World Startup Report team acts as the primary editor and moderator for new input.

“A lot of people from the community helped with this wiki, and if Malaysia can serve as the model for other countries hoping to start their own startup wikis, that would be great,” Gai says.

Quizzed about how accurate the information in the wiki is, given the natural biases or agendas of would-be contributors, Gai cites Cunningham's Law, named after Ward Cunningham, father of the wiki: "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer."

Knowledge is power and such efforts to contribute information and share understanding of Malaysia’s startup scene mark one of the key ingredients that will fuel the realisation of the Digital Malaysia programme.

First announced in 2012, the nationwide initiative aims to reposition the nation as a player in the world’s digital economy.

One the three main thrusts of Digital Malaysia is to shift behaviour from being consumption- to becoming more production-centric, or to change the consumer mindset so that Malaysian individuals and businesses produce as much as they consume from digital technologies.

Another thrust is to evolve from low knowledge-add to high knowledge-add, or increasing the development of local talent in key industries to become innovators and knowledge workers.

Entrepreneurship is recognised as one of the key drivers for these, which has led to national ICT custodian Multimedia Development Corp (MDeC) – which is the lead agency for the Digital Malaysia programme – to channel a lot of its efforts into the startup ecosystem.

In June, during the Echelon startup conference hosted in Singapore, the Malaysian Wiki was unveiled as a resource during a workshop centred on doing business in the country by MaGIC chief executive officer Cheryl Yeoh.

In conjunction with the wiki’s unveiling, MaGIC and WorldStartupReport also teamed up with Penang-based startup Piktochart to produce a 5-minute guide to Malaysia Startup Landscape 2014 infographic (see below).