Bangkok, 17 June 2022: The Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, in partnership with the Asian Network, launched a new ERIA initiative to promote inclusive economic development though entrepreneurship and innovation across ASEAN and East Asia: the E-S-I Knowledge Lab.

The Entrepreneurship (E), Start-ups (S), Innovation (I) Knowledge Lab is a platform to discuss, share idea and develop new knowledge on how innovation and business creation are contributing to the postpandemic recovery across ASEAN and East Asia. The platform is open and collaborative and engages actors across the academia, the business community, policy makers as well as international organisations.

The E-S-I Knowledge Lab scopes new tech and innovation trends in a number of key areas for the development of ASEAN (such as ed tech, agri tech and health tech) and wants to connect the growing community of ASEAN innovators with peers across the globe. The E-S-I Knowledge Lab is also committed to promote innovation for inclusive development, in particular by promoting knowledge on how to support women entrepreneurs and innovators, innovative social enterprises working to include persons with disabilities and the digitalisations of MSMEs.

During the launch event, key stakeholders from the Thai business community, knowledge organisations and entrepreneurship and innovation support organisations gathered to discuss challenges and opportunities to foster inclusion in the digital economy and innovation in ASEAN. Participants discussed challenges and opportunities to include persons with disability in the digital economy. The issue of skills development and education emerged as a key factor for disability inclusion: on one hand better skills development is necessary for persons with disability to be employed or become entrepreneurs; on the other hand traditional employers and HR departments need to learn how to work with persons with disabilities and successfully include them in their organisations.

‘The E-S-I Knowledge Lab is our new platform to discuss how innovation and entrepreneurship are transforming ASEAN economies. If we want to foster inclusion and move towards sustainable development goals, it is key to understand how under-represented groups can benefit from increased participation, such as persons with disaiblities or rather, as we prefer to call them, persons with different abilities,’ concluded Dr Giulia Ajmone Marsan, Strategy and Partnership Director at ERIA.

Ravindra NGO, CEO and Founder of the Asian Network, highlighted the importance to partner with ERIA under their ‘Empower our Future’ event series engaging different key players and stakeholders among Asian Network members including non-profit and corporate sector, entrepreneurs and young leaders.

For more information on E-S-I Knowledge Lab visit: https://www.esi-eria.org/

Connect with E-S-I Knowledge Lab on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/e-s-i-knowledge-lab/