World Economic Forum on ASEAN

Innovation will be on the agenda for the next three days here in Ha Noi, Viet Nam. The theme of the meeting is ASEAN 4.0: Entrepreneurship and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and we'll be exploring the new ideas needed to propel the region through its next phase of growth.

Participants are beginning to arrive, including Iim Fahima Jachja, the founder of motorbike safety platform Queenrides, one of the companies selected in our competition to find ASEAN's most dynamic start-ups.

ASEAN is a young region. In Ha Noi of an evening, the pavements are full of strolling young families, and teenagers on mopeds zip through the streets. There are 213 million youth in the region, the largest ever cohort, and they will all reach adulthood in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

What lies ahead for them?

Here's a look at how education levels vary in the region, and a plea for an education system better adapted to the creative skills needed for the new era.

Participants including Rajan Anandan, Managing Director of Southeast Asia and India for Google; Le Hong Minh, CEO of Vietnamese internet giant VNG; and Yasmin Mahmood, CEO of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation will be discussing the future at our Open Forum public session, beginning at 10:00 local time.

What lies ahead for today's students? How can we ensure everyone benefits from the new technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

While our survey revealed strong optimism about the future, the coming waves of disruption will create both winners and losers.

Here are some key quotes from participants in our open forum session on creating an inclusive ASEAN 4.0.

"The more we have technology, the greater the digital divide," said Annie Koh, Vice President at Singapore Management University, calling for more inclusiveness in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Rajan Anandan, Managing Director of Southeast Asia and India for Google, talked of the huge potential ahead for ASEAN. He noted that the digital economy as a percentage of overall GDP for the ASEAN region 7%, compared to 16% in China and 35% in the United States.

"We need one integrated digital economy, with free flow of data across countries, seamless data, for goods and services to move across these countries," he said.

Le Hong Minh, CEO of Vietnamese internet giant VNG, shared his advice on what it takes to build a billion dollar company.

"Don’t do the normal stuff," he told an audience of students. "The future will happen with something today that you think it magical, something that is unimaginable."

For Yasmin Mahmood, CEO of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, curiosity is part of the magic.

"65% of young people going in to schools now will come out to jobs that don’t exist yet," she said.

She described how curiosity was the key quality that took her from a village in Malaysia through an education in maths and physics to her role as a tech leader.

"I remember watching TV and being so upset that I couldn’t understand how the little people appear on that screen. What is worrying to me now is if your degree is the end, not the means to the end."

Conference centres tend to look the same the world over, but not when there are papaya trees and bicycles inside.

Here's a glimpse of Ha Noi's NCC as we get going for the World Economic Forum on ASEAN 2018.

Our phones have become a "phantom limb" that hamper real connections and creativity, argues the photographer Eric Pickersgill.