‘ASEAN Is the World’s Fifth Largest Economy’
HSE University’s Online Campus has presented the new English-language course ‘The Digital Transformation of Business Practices in Southeast Asia’ on the National Open Education Platform. The online course by Evgeny Kanaev, one of the leading regional scientists and professor at HSE University’s Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, examines the features of business practices in Southeast Asia and the impact of digital transformation on them.
Evgeny Kanaev
— Dr Kanaev, why did you decide to devote a course to business in Southeast Asia?
— This is a very promising subregion in terms of potential returns from commercial activities. In terms of its total economic potential, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes ten states of the Asian South East, is the fifth largest economy in the world. In Southeast Asia, large-scale infrastructure construction is underway (including cross-border infrastructure), the level of consumption is growing, and new commercial practices are being established and developed. ASEAN acts as a coordinator of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a resource-based multilateral initiative. Let’s not forget that the subregion’s closest neighbours are China and India, whose economic and commercial presence in Southeast Asian countries is expanding with a corresponding multiplier effect on business exchanges. Given the sum of these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that Southeast Asia is the object of increased, and most importantly, growing interest from the corporate sector.
The states of Southeast Asia develop the ASEAN Economic Community project. Without going into details, we emphasise the main thing: the project is aimed at transforming Southeast Asia into a unified space for conducting economic and commercial activities, which is integrated into global processes. The ultimate goal of ASEAN states is to create and subsequently capitalise on economies of scale, in which the digital transformation of business practices plays a key role.
— And what is this transformation?
— It is complex and multi-vector in nature. Increasing cooperation in the digital sphere, among business circles as well, involves the development of 5G internet infrastructure (some Southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore, are eyeing 6G). On this basis, new data storage and processing centres, both corporate and hosting, will be built, and retail and advertising practices will be updated, up to their integration into the Metaverse. Such promising areas of economic and business activity from a commercial point of view as the digital transformation of the healthcare sector (Health Tech) and education (EdTech) receive a powerful impetus. The digital support of production, supply, and logistics chains is in full swing; new payment systems are being created based on distributed ledger technologies, and the central banks of Southeast Asian countries are exploring the possibility of introducing digital currencies.
Digital tools are significantly changing the established practices of interaction between government agencies and business circles. At the same time, the legislative framework for these processes is being updated. The corporate sector of Southeast Asian countries is also closely looking at them, from large companies to small and medium-sized ones, and even micro-enterprises. Digital transformation of business practices and digital competency development programmes are becoming part of the agenda for the ASEAN Business Advisory Council. Based on the sum of these circumstances, it can be reasonably assumed that the conditions for doing business in the Southeast Asian region are changing rapidly, and the researchers’ task is to understand the logic of these changes while sharing their knowledge.
— Who can benefit from the course?
— The course is designed for a wide range of specialists who, due to the nature of their activities, are faced with the need to develop economic and commercial cooperation with the countries of Southeast Asia. The course will also be useful to specialists covering the current processes in Southeast Asia, be it at the level of preparing analytical materials for decision-makers in politics and business, or at the level of media materials. Regional scientists will also find it useful—both students taking their first steps in the profession and experienced specialists who have long been involved in ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific region as a whole and aim to expand their existing competencies.
There are extremely few specialists who deeply understand the specifics of Southeast Asia from the viewpoint of conducting commercial activities there—one might even say unacceptably few. Those who possess these competencies are professional practitioners who understand some narrow issues
The course offers a broad, and most importantly, systemic view of Southeast Asia from the viewpoint of digital transformation in business cooperation. Let us repeat: we are talking about understanding the fundamental conditions for doing business in the Southeast Asian region and its digital transformation, and not about solving current applied problems, such as, for example, filling out a warehouse invoice when receiving cargo in Vietnam or Indonesia.
The course is in English, and this is one of the key conditions for preparing specialists for practical work in the subregion. Entrepreneurs from Southeast Asian countries communicate with foreign colleagues either in the languages of their countries or in English. English makes it possible to use the course in various types of cross-collaboration with foreign universities.