Multimedia Super Corridor Research Articles

Malaysian Technological Elite: Specifics of a Knowledge Society in a Developing Country

AbstractThere is a lack of understanding of the forms of knowledge and expertise in so-called developing societies such as Malaysia. This paper addresses this issue by suggesting a framework—based on Schutz and Luckmann's (1973) concept of social distribution of knowledge and Knorr Cetina's (1999) notion of epistemic communities—for examining the Malaysian automotive and information technology industries. These industries are central to Malaysia's agenda of becoming a knowledge society in the context of Vision 2020. Vital to these industries is a group of Malaysian professionals who possess knowledge and expertise: the “technological elite.” is group, the technological elite, includes, but is not limited to, engineers working for Proton, as well as professionals working in the Multimedia Super Corridor. Using professional biographies and narratives, this paper illuminates the context and culture of knowledge in Malaysia. Similarities in the principles that inform epistemic practices and relations within an “old” industry (i.e., automotive) and a “new” industry (i.e., ICT) call for the recognition of epistemic work characterized by the mixing of specialist knowledge with other forms of knowledge, and of localized knowledge in nascent epistemic communities with knowledge developed from an established tradition of technological practice.

Malaysia, Modernity and the Multimedia Super Corridor: A Critical Geography of Intelligent Landscapes – Edited by Tim Bunnell

Malaysia, Modernity and the Multimedia Super Corridor: A Critical Geography of Intelligent Landscapes – Edited by Tim Bunnell

KM Implementation and Its Influence on Performance: An Empirical Evidence from Malaysian Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Companies

This paper investigates how information technology (IT) companies in Malaysia, particularly those with Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) status, perceived the importance and degree of implementation of knowledge management (KM) success factors in their organisations and how these factors impact on their performance. Data were generated from a questionnaire survey of 427 middle managers from 194 MSC-status companies operating in Malaysia. Although the IT companies are highly aware of the importance of KM, the factors were only moderately implemented, with the exclusion of removal of organisational constraints. Some significant interactions were found between the KM success factors and organisational performance. Such significant findings provide important information on whether the MSC-status companies perceived KM as important to their success. In addition, based on the empirical results, recommendations are made on how the companies could improve their performance by narrowing the gaps through better organising their KM practices from the right perspective. This paper provides new information not only in terms of filling the gap of the newness of KM practices in Malaysia, it also has implications on the relationships between KM success factors and the performance of the MSC-status IT organisations in Malaysia.

Urban renewal in Asia-Pacific: A comparative analysis of brainports for Sydney and Kuala Lumpur

This paper reviews the concept of brainports and application to a South-East Asian context. The “brainport” concept is relevant for analysing transformation of an existing physical and information infrastructure, but a key finding of the research project is that brainports can act as a key component of a new and emerging global creative infrastructure with features and capabilities that help to facilitate the global mobility of human talent. We explore the brainport concept and apply it to two specific cities in the South-East Asian region that have different approaches to urban renewal — Sydney, Australia where an existing shipping port is undergoing transformation into a different brainport, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, presenting a region not associated with a shipping port – the “Multimedia Super Corridor” (MSC) – as an intelligent city or brainport. The authors' comparative analysis sets up the attributes and a framework by which to review other cities in South East Asia or globally as brainports. The project adopted the “bricolage” research method, which includes interviews with domain experts, government officials of both cities and creative talent, providing a rich description for the attributes under investigation, as well as workshops with key stakeholders and a selection of a montage of photographs from a pool of photography and video footage.

Re-fragmenting the ‘political’: Globalization, governmentality and Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor

Abstract Work drawing upon Michel Foucault's analyses of governmental rationalities has extended understandings of the ‘political’. The geography of this domain, however, has remained largely intact in the governmentality literature. In this paper, we contribute to work which unsettles conceptions of national scale society as a political unity across and within which government is territorialized. We examine Cyberjaya, an ‘intelligent city’ in Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor, as part of a distinct governmental zone oriented to the nurturing of ‘intelligent’ subjects for a globally-oriented information economy. What the anthropologist Aihwa Ong terms the ‘cybercorridor’ zone is one of a series of differentiated sites and spaces of government which reconfigure existing communal and spatial division in postcolonial Malaysia. As such, while exemplifying non-national territorializations of government, the Malaysian case also questions the extent to which these are novel to an era of globalization. Beyond the ‘advanced liberal’ contexts which have been the main focus of the governmentality literature – and from where the ‘death of the social’ has been diagnosed – governmental fragmentation often precedes the rise of languages and lenses of globalization.

Stories of space and subjectivity in planning the Multimedia Super Corridor

The Malaysian government has embarked on an ambitious refashioning of the nation called Vision 2020 in pursuit of its goal of becoming a ‘developed country’. A pivotal component of this ‘vision’ is the planning and provision of information technology (IT) infrastructure in a multi-billion dollar urban mega-project called the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC). The purpose of my paper is twofold. First, I situate an official planning document for the MSC entitled Physical Design Guidelines for the Multimedia Super Corridor in the activity of transnational planning practice. Second, I argue that a thematic series of organizing planning concepts and practices can be identified in this document. These concepts and practices work in two ways: first, by representing highly positioned notions of sub-urban, middle-class urban design conventional in specific North American cities as universally applicable to, and desirable for, the broader national development goals the MSC is intended to lead; second, by creating a ‘total image’ for the MSC that suggests an apparently seamless relationship between the MSC and the proper citizens for it at every imaginable scale. One important effect of these plans is the material transformation of a rural landscape of and for production into an urban landscape of and for consumption. This transformation raises the question of who can belong to the ‘nation’ being (re)imagined via the MSC.

Support Institutions and R&D Activities in an ICT Cluster

Economic geography in an era of global competition poses a paradox. In theory, location should no longer be a source of competitive advantage. Open global markets, rapid transportation and high-speed communications should allow any company to source anything from any place at any time. But in practice, location remains central to competition and institutions seem to help in the development of regions. This article examines the role of Malaysia's Multimedia Development Corporation as a regional development agency—in the development of the MSC Project—the Multimedia Super Corridor Cluster, a project to develop the information and communications technology sector, started by the government of Malaysia to kickstart the transition to a knowledge-based economy. Even though the MDC has played a significant role in developing the MSC project, there is much more it can do to develop it as a ‘regional cluster’. It is concluded that the MDC has been doing a good job of marketing the MSC in general and attracting companies to set up shop in Malaysia in order to form a new knowledge-based sector. It is suggested that the business-related function should receive equal attention when any innovation cluster is designed and operated.

Cultural-Products Industries and Urban Economic Development

The article begins with a brief definition of the cultural economy. A first generation of local economic development policy approaches based on place marketing and associated initiatives is described. The possibilities of a more powerful second-generation approach are then sketched out with special emphasis on localized complexes of cultural-products industries. An extensive review and classification of these complexes is laid out, and their inward and outward relations to global markets are considered. On this basis, a critical discussion of local economic policy options focused on cultural-products industries is offered. Contrasting examples of development initiatives in major global cities, in selected old manufacturing towns, and in the Multimedia Super Corridor of Malaysia are briefly presented. It is suggested that the growth and spread of localized production agglomerations based on cultural-products industries are leading not to cultural uniformity but to greatly increased diversity at the global level.

The Malaysian Telehealth Flagship Application: a national approach to health data protection and utilisation and consumer rights

Telehealth refers to the integration of information, telecommunication, human–machine interface technologies and health technologies to deliver health care, to promote the heath status of the people and to create health. The Malaysian Telehealth Application [Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress on Medical Informatics, 1998, p. 1282] will, on completion, provide every resident of the country an electronic Lifetime Health Record (LHR) and Lifetime Health Plan (LHP). He or she will also hold a smart card that will contain a subset of the data in the Lifetime Health Record. These will be the means by which Malaysians will receive “seamless continuous quality care” across a range of health facilities and health care providers, and by which Malaysia’s health goal of a nation of “healthy individuals, families and communities” is achieved. The challenges to security and privacy in providing access to an electronic Lifetime Health Record at private and government health facilities and to the electronic Lifetime Health Plan at homes of consumers require not only technical mechanisms but also national policies and practices addressing threats while facilitating access to health data during health encounters in different care settings. Organisational policies establish the goals that technical mechanisms serve. They should outline appropriate uses and access to information, create mechanisms for preventing and detecting violations, and set sanctions for violations. Some interesting innovations have been used to address these issues against the background of the launching of the multimedia supercorridor (MSC) in Malaysia.

ICT Clusters as a Way to Materialize a National System of Innovation: Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor Flagships

AbstractDeveloping countries have realised the need to develop the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector to compete in an environment of increasing globalisation and also the emergence of the knowledge based economy. But given the limited resources, one approach seems to be popular among many countries is the ‘cluster’ based approach for industrial development This paper seeks to highlight one such effort viz. Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Cluster with its Flagships approach. The MSC is presented in the paper as a physical manifestation of the NSI, to illustrate how a policy driven – cluster based regional development approach has helped to further national innovative performance and competitiveness

Learning from the Silicon Valley and implications for technological leapfrogging the experience of Malaysia

Innovation plays a crucial role in the evolution of high-tech clusters which are invoked as a strategy for sustainable industrialisation and economic growth. Over the last five decades, the Silicon Valley in California has emerged as the most successful high-tech cluster in the world. Not surprisingly, policymakers, regional planners and real-estate developers elsewhere in the world have sought to emulate its success. Malaysia’s answer to the Silicon Valley is the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), which was launched in 1995 with the aim to create a knowledge-based economy through technological leapfrogging. Is the MSC a mere ‘top-down’ planning exercise that is out of sync with the needs of the Malaysian economy, or does it represent a strategic way forward for Malaysia to catch up on technologically advanced countries? This paper examines the rationale, implementation and progress of the MSC, the issues arising from the MSC experience and the implications for other developing countries.

Creating space in the global economy: Building a high tech dream in Malaysia

The globalisation of innovation has become a major issue in the discourses of economic development. There is a view that unfettered market forces will promote greater and better developmental outcomes and for this to happen, the state must play a minimalist role. There is the other view that argues that the state can play 'catalytic' roles and mediate the forces of globalisation to engender outcomes congruent to its aspirations. In this paper, we look at the experiences of one Asian state, Malaysia. The paper will examine the historical evolution of technology policies in Malaysia. It argues that the Malaysian state has been an active change agent and has sought to realise its vision of becoming a democratic, modern and 'developed society' via its latest technology flagship, the Multimedia Supercorridor (MSC). The paper argues that, despite its resoluteness and investment in the project, the Malaysian state is unlikely to succeed in producing its high tech utopia. Rooted in a highly technocratic and managerial context, the Malaysian vision fails to account for the prevailing institutional forces impacting on, and impeding transformation in Malaysia.

Malaysia’s leap into the future: an evaluation of the multimedia super corridor

The multimedia super corridor (MSC) is an initiative by the Malaysian government to transform the nation into a knowledge-based economy. Modeled after the Silicon Valley, the multibillion dollar project started in 1995, spanning an area of more than 750 km 2. This paper evaluates the MSC from an institutional and entrepreneurial perspective. We identify key ingredients that contributed to the success of the SV as well as other science parks. These ingredients, which include the role of universities, incubators, research centers, government, infrastructure and human talent pool are considered vis-à-vis the MSC. We find that the Malaysian technopole has made progress in these factors albeit at various degrees. However, the MSC falters on the entrepreneurial aspect. The impediments to continued success include the attitude towards risk-taking and the general lack in innovative spirit which makes up the essence of a technopole.

The Webs They Weave: Malaysia's Multimedia Super-corridor and New York City's Silicon Alley

This paper compares Malaysia's Multimedia Super-corridor (MSC) and New York's Silicon Alley to assess whether state-led development of digital districts is a viable alternative to neo-liberal approaches. The changing nature of east Asia's developmental states as they adopt neo-liberal elements (such as venture capital) casts doubt on the idea that east Asian cities are `embedded' in developmental frameworks. Using actor-network theory to conceptualise the nesting of cities as processes of 'translation', the paper examines how state frameworks in the US and Malaysia shaped the respective efforts of district entrepreneurs to weave together ideas, resources and relationships. The findings confirm actor-network theory's claim that the significance of a particular element depends on the network it becomes enmeshed in. In the case of Silicon Alley, neo-liberal regimes did not directly participate but promoted devices (such as venture capital, options) that enabled venture capitalists to bring together myriad enterpreneurs. In contrast, the Malaysian state, which is deemed a 'developmental hybrid', devised a comprehensive plan for the MSC and itself used devices such as venture capital to enrol participants. While Silicon Alley was a temporary base for circulating capital, the MSC effort is creating an enduring foundation for digital industry.

Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor Cluster: communication linkages among stakeholders in a national system of innovation

As the wave of globalization washes over geographical boundaries, the world steps into the era of a new knowledge-based economy with governments striving to encourage innovation in industry especially through national systems of innovation. A national system of innovation (NSI) is considered important because how a nation utilizes and exploits its NSI will determine whether it can compete and ride the wave of globalization or be carried by it and thrashed onto the shores of the new economy. This paper seeks to highlight the linkages developed for enabling communication among the various NSI stakeholders for achieving goals in one such effort, viz. the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Cluster of Malaysia. The MSC offers a vision to create a global multimedia climate through an integrated environment of interlinked elements and attributes. The government of Malaysia, realising the significance of the NSI as a way to better utilize, exploit, and enhance systems, is making efforts to this effect. The efforts include bringing together various stakeholder organizations under the "Multimedia Flagship Applications" to develop flagship applications. This is for the development of information technology applications to pave the way toward a knowledge-based economy. The MSC Cluster is presented here as a physical manifestation of the NSI, and it gives an idea as to how policy makers can design linkages for communication among the various stakeholders to further national innovative performance and competitiveness in general.

Malaysian regulation versus e-banking

Electronic technology has become increasingly important for people in their personal as well as their commercial lives. The increasing pace at which electronic technology is expanding in usage has alerted lawmakers to take stock of the inadequacies of the law. New Acts have been enforced to protect the users of electronic technology. This paper, however, is only concerned with one aspect of this technology, that is, ebanking. The paper traces the electronic revolution within the Malaysian banking sector and presents the current state of affairs with respect to the legal developments. A number of new laws have been promulgated to cater for transactions based on electronic impulses. The paper outlines the major import of the Acts, especially those that have a significant impact on e-banking and further seeks to point out the deficiencies. The government, it needs to be stressed, is greatly encouraging electronic activity, as evidenced by its creation of the Multimedia Super Corridor. The central bank is, however, rather cautious of allowing full-fledged e-banking. The central bank guarantees deposits at commercial banks so its reticence to allow electronic activities, which are not fully covered by law, is understandable. It must be reiterated that the ultimate success of e-banking lies in its patronage and its patronage is a function of the security, as offered by law.

Dilemmas of a Proactive Human Resource Development Policy in Malaysia

The Malaysian economy is moving towards more knowledge-intensive forms of production. The government attempts to pursue a very pro-active policy in this transition. We argue that the growth of a knowledge economy sets corresponding demands for change on institutional preconditions and new challenges, especially with regard to the need for reflexive governance. The analysis examines how the government provides institutional support to skill and human resource development for more knowledge-intensive production. The Multimedia Super Corridor is analysed as a critical case that illustrates the problems of transforming a second tier Newly Industrialising Country (NIC) from mainly labour-intensive forms of production to higher value-added forms of production. Based on our interviews with a number of government agencies, business organisations and multinational companies the article analyses the problems of transforming the institutional framework to promote the development of an information society.

Multimedia Utopia? A Geographical Critique of High‐Tech Development in Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor

For all the supposed novelty of the “Information Age”, high‐tech development in Malaysia perpetuates existing patterns of social and spatial inequality. The Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), a 50‐km‐long high‐tech zone stretching southwards from the federal capital, Kuala Lumpur, is imagined in state discourse as part of a transition to a “multimedia utopia” benefiting all Malaysians throughout the national territory. This article seeks to contest such utopian imaginings. In the first place, informational forms of economy and society are dependent upon complex physical infrastructure, the distribution of and access to which is highly uneven. The MSC and other major investment in information infrastructure in Malaysia are overwhelmingly concentrated in the main national city‐region. Second, already marginal groups and individuals are subjected to new forms of social and spatial exclusion. Apart from financial exclusion arising from the privatisation of high‐tech spaces, incorporation into Malaysian high‐tech futures is dependent upon the possession of skills deemed appropriate for an emerging information economy and society. These processes are exemplified by the displacement of plantation workers in the construction of Putrajaya, one of the MSC’s two new “intelligent” cities. While such negative social impacts have a long association with large‐scale modern development projects, the article argues that it is specifically a pervasive discourse of “high‐tech”—and the way in which this has been refracted in the national context—which legitimises the financial and social costs of new high‐tech urban development.

Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor and Its First Crisis of Confidence

In this paper, Malaysia's attempt to join the 'information society' and 'knowledge economy' by embarking on the ambitious Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) is mapped out and analysed. The discussion is framed in the context of globalization, modernity and the situation in other Muslim societies. Notwithstanding the present national skepticism regarding the MSC, the project has been reasonably well designed and launched. But it is, in the final analysis, only a part of the larger structure of national innovation systems that function equally as 'engines of economic growth.'

(Trans)national Realities and Imaginations: The Business and Politics of Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor

(Trans)national Realities and Imaginations: The Business and Politics of Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor