Currently, the Industrial Revolution 4.0 is taking place on a global scale at an increasingly fast pace and is expected to change the entire system of production, management and governance around the world. This revolution has actually brought opportunities as well as challenges for countries; the main opportunity is that countries will have access to develop in terms of science and technology and integrate with the world, but the challenge is that if they do not keep up, they will be lagging further and further behind. Therefore, the Industrial Revolution 4.0 is said to be a valuable opportunity for developing countries to seize opportunities and rise up. The condition for seizing opportunities from this revolution is to prepare human resources and facilities to promote scientific research and technology transfer. In the current and upcoming period, technology transfer plays a very important role to strengthen cooperation and promote the development of scientific research. The current global trend is promoting technology transfer to create added value in the development of science and technology. In Vietnam, in the process of promoting the cause of innovation, industrialization, modernization and proactive international integration, technology transfer and training of high-quality human resources are the core factors in the renovation and construction of the country.
Technology transfer is a new concept that has appeared in recent decades and is also an issue of interest to many researchers, with very important implications for global economic development, especially for countries that are undergoing the process of industrialization and modernization like Vietnam. Basically, technology transfer is the transfer of ownership or the right to use part or all of the technology from the party with the right to transfer the technology to the technology recipient, in which the transfer of technology ownership is the transfer of all ownership, use rights and the right to dispose of the technology to other organizations and individuals, and the transfer of the right to use the technology is the permission of other organizations and individuals to use their technology. Technology transfer plays a very important role for business development as catching up with technology trends in the market will not take too much time to prepare production stages; promoting the process of technological innovation to accelerate the modernization process; limiting risks in the production process to enhance competitiveness; easily customizing featured products to create highly competitive featured products. Therefore, research along with planning policies and strategies to improve efficiency in receiving and applying foreign advanced technologies in domestic production, putting domestic technologies into production practice for each industry and each field is considered a key step, ensuring rapid and sustainable development and also encouraging technology transfer from domestic to foreign countries in order to improve scientific and technological capacity to meet modern development requirements.
In the world, developed and developing countries have technology transfer policies to improve national scientific and technological capacity. The United States is the world’s leading power in science and technology and transferring scientific research results into socio-economic development thanks to a rich ecosystem of people, institutions and appropriate policies that have accelerated the process from research laboratories to development projects and to markets, strengthening the connection between scientific research institutions, universities and industry. The Federal Republic of Germany is very interested in supporting innovation activities, technology transfer, technology enterprise start-up, especially for small and medium enterprises. The content of technology transfer according to this country’s concept is the transfer of knowledge, technical know-how and technology applied in practice, including the improvement of technology and establishment of new enterprises on the basis of research results through indirect technology transfer and direct technology transfer. In Japan, policy on science, technology and innovation has undergone significant changes in recent times, focusing on the areas of public research, science and technology, and innovation in enterprise, technology transfer and commercialization. Korea has flexibly implemented forms of technology import and transfer through various stages based on domestic technology capacity. Besides, Korea also attracts foreign technology through research cooperation with major partners and investment in overseas high-tech companies, strengthening research, setting up overseas laboratories, establishing strategic relations with multinational companies. Taiwan has a strategy and orientation to import technology very early and consistently through importing technology through foreign direct investment channels and then switch to the form of transfer along with actively researching and developing, actively exploiting technology, mastering and creating. This policy is stable and maintained until now. Thailand is also a country with a strategy to transfer and import technology through foreign direct investment from large Japanese and American companies and corporations. Up to now, Thailand has been successful in some key areas of industry such as manufacturing. Thereby, it shows that technology transfer plays a very important role in connecting scientific research and promoting economic development as well as creating prosperity for society in countries around the world.
Viet Nam attaches great importance to technology transfer as a key to socio-economic development. In each stage of development, our country’s legal system on technology transfer has always been amended, supplemented and perfected in order to promptly meet the requirements in practice, in which the Ordinance on technology transfer from foreign countries into Vietnam was promulgated by the State Council in 1988 and the Regulation on technology transfer was incorporated into a chapter in the Civil Code (Part VI, Chapter III) in 1995. This is considered an important milestone in the formation of Vietnam’s technology import and transfer policy in the early stages of world integration. Then, the Law on Technology Transfer was passed by the National Assembly in 2006 and the Law on High Technology in 2008. In the 3rd session of June 19, 2017, the 14th National Assembly passed the Law on Technology Transfer (replacing the 2006 Law on Technology Transfer) regulating the State’s policy on technology transfer, including the specific content “Promoting the transfer of advanced and high-tech technologies from abroad to Vietnam; encouraging technology transfer from Vietnam to abroad; promoting domestic technology transfer; focusing on spreading advanced and high-tech technologies from foreign-invested enterprises to domestic enterprises”. Currently, the promotion of technology transfer in our country also has policies in the system of legal documents related to the development of science and technology enterprises, such as exemption and reduction of corporate income tax, incentives on land tax, transfer of research results to science and technology enterprises as prescribed in Decree No. 13/2019/ND-CP of the Government dated February 1, 2019 on science and technology enterprises as amended from Decree No. 80/2007/ND-CP of the Government dated May 19, 2007. In addition, in Decision No. 138/QD-TTg dated January 26, 2022 on amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decision No.1851/QD-TTg dated December 27, 2018 of the Prime Minister approving the Project “Promoting the transfer, mastery and development of technology from abroad to Vietnam in priority industries and fields in the period to 2025, orientation to 2030” to support the capacity building of managers, engineers, researchers and technical staff for enterprises, scientific and technological organizations through intensive training abroad or inviting foreign experts to work and train in Vietnam. In particular, the Document of the 13th Party Congress also emphasized the promotion of innovation, transfer, application and strong development of science and technology. This is an important legal corridor for technology transfer activities in our country.
Regarding the technology transfer situation in our country, the main activities are through foreign direct investment (FDI) projects by investors who are also technology transferors; domestic investment from the purchase of technology, or the purchase of equipment accompanied by technology from abroad; investment by Vietnamese people residing abroad. These activities are mainly the reception of technology transfer from outside while the transfer of technology from home to abroad is very limited. The achievements of technology transfer in our country in recent years have gradually contributed to promoting the growth rate of industries and fields in the whole economy, including increased technology transfer services, accelerated transfer of research results at research facilities into applications, and technology transfer through foreign-invested enterprises reaching a high average level. The clear trend is that technology transfer is often associated with business direction and is oriented according to market mechanisms, in which technology transfer activities have become the main activity and are under the initiative of businesses. Although state management agencies have programs and projects for innovation and technology transfer, specific technology transfer plans are built and implemented by businesses themselves in a focused manner, associated with in-depth investment and requirements to improve economic efficiency.
In the current period, technology is considered a tool to improve the quality and competitiveness of products, in which universities and research institutes are the main places to create technology, and intellectual property through scientific research is the main source to create inventions that can be commercialized. In fact, the creation, knowledge transfer and commercialization of products formed from scientific research of universities, research institutes and research organizations have contributed to sustainable and strong socio-economic development. Currently, the technology transfer and commercialization of intellectual products in universities and research institutes in Vietnam is on a very active development trend and is increasingly associated with more practice along with the State’s policies to increasingly encourage and create favorable conditions for linking universities and businesses to develop science and technology markets and promote the commercialization of research results.
Founded in 1995 under the modern university urban model, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City (VNUHCM) is one of the largest educational institutions in Vietnam, including 27 units of training, scientific research, technology transfer and 8 member universities with more than 400 professors, associate professors and more than 1,300 PhDs. According to the latest ranking, VNUHCM is the leading university in Vietnam in terms of income from technology transfer and ranks high globally with annual technology transfer and community service revenue of VNUHCM all reaching a high level thanks to the autonomy in operations, diversification in scientific research towards technology application and transfer. Besides the two types of technology transfer commonly applied domestically: transfer to localities and based on research cooperation programs with businesses, VNUHCM also has international transfer programs for research results of scientists. Some international transfer results of VNUHCM in recent times can be mentioned as follows:
Technical research and supervision project for the construction of Cashew Shell Recovery Center in Yamoussoukro in Ivory Coast: The project includes designing and directing the construction and supply of equipment for the Pilot center to exploit cashew shell value in Yamoussoukro with a design capacity of 60,000 tons of cashew shell per year on behalf of the investor (MO) and also supports the Investor to implement and operate the technical and economic model of exploiting the value of cashew shells to contribute to improving the cashew value chain in Youmoussoukro.

The Pedestrian Injury in Car Accidents Project with Toyota Motor Corporation: The objective is to obtain the Head Injury Index (HIC) and injury standards of various parts of the human body. From these study results, a speed limit warning will be proposed in densely populated areas or schools, where the level of danger of human injury will be alerted to different speeds.

Development of automated teaching methods for industrial robots with AJINEXTEK Company, Korea: The goal of the project is to develop components of automated learning methods to make it easier to use robots in industry while also leveraging these research results for practical application including 1) picking and placing toothbrushes and 2) picking and placing frozen shrimp.

Research topic Fog-based data collection platform for IoT services in public transport (bus system) with TIS Company, Japan: The objective of this study is to design a fog-based data collection platform for IoT services in public transport and apply it to the bus system to create a well-structured computational model to support the next generation application in public transport of IoT.

Research topic Development of application flow data platform for urban and rural use with TIS Company, Japan: The main objective of the study is to study a framework based on IoT, AI, Big Data of edge computing supported for agricultural and transportation applications.

The research project of Edge Computing Software Framework for Agriculture with Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things with TIS Company, Japan: The research objective of this topic is to research a software framework based on IoT, AI, Big Data and edge computing to support the application in agriculture.
Compared to the scale of VNUHCM, the technology transfer process in recent years has not really met expectations. However, the implementation of the transfer at VNUHCM in the coming time will be promoted and this is considered one of the pillars in scientific and technological development on the basis of consolidating human resources, facilities as well as removing regulatory problems. Through successful international technology transfer models at VNUHCM, a number of lessons learned have been considered to improve the ability and efficiency of technology transfer in the future:
In order to have effective technology transfer, research institutes and universities must be really strong research subjects to be able to transfer research results to enterprises to improve competitiveness in domestic and foreign markets, bringing real efficiency to enterprises. The research should be carried out in specialized research units to create spearhead results and breakthroughs to create high added value that can support enterprises to produce highly competitive goods in the market because most of the enterprises in our country are small and medium so the research capacity is limited in terms of both human resources and facilities. Therefore, some research units should focus on investing in human resources and facilities for intensive research while helping to improve the status of science and technology and meet the requirements of society.
The combination of universities, research institutes and enterprises should be strengthened in order to facilitate the promotion of scientific research and technology transfer, although there has been a policy of combining the State, universities and enterprises, in fact, the operation results have not met the expectations. Technology transfer often comes from the actual needs of the business and scientists will be the ones to solve those practical requirements. This combination brings many important benefits as enterprises are transferred technology to meet practical needs with low cost and high efficiency while scientists and universities are invested to develop scientific research while also contributing to the development of science and technology to serve the requirements of socio-economic development.
Create opportunities for individuals and organizations with scientific research results and intellectual property with commercialization potential to access, connect and seek opportunities for investment cooperation and technology transfer with investors, organizations and financial funds. In fact, many scientists have initial products from the research process with very high commercialization potential but lack investment funds to develop and perfect the products to bring to market. Therefore, creating conditions for scientists with potential products to associate with investment organizations to fully develop products is very important and necessary for promoting scientific research of scientists and also improving the value of products, thereby improving the position of science and technology as well as practical applications, avoiding waste and loss of intellectual property.
There should be an expansion of international cooperation to create opportunities to link and transfer technology abroad as well as receive reverse transfer. Currently, the world is in the process of promoting the development of science and technology on the basis of globalization, so the expansion of international cooperation will open up many opportunities for cooperation and development in research and technology transfer. Through the practical process of operation, it shows that the expansion of cooperation in the past time has made a lot of progress with many international cooperation topics and projects signed but the potential has not been exploited as expected.
Managers also need to recognize and re-evaluate the effectiveness of implementing policies to support enterprises in the search, transfer and innovation of technology as well as support for research units to carry out national-oriented scientific research. In fact, although many policies have been issued to promote technology transfer in order to improve the ability to develop the economy based on science and technology, there are many obstacles that prevent technology transfer, leading to a lot of waste of intellectual property in the past time. Therefore, the synchronization of policies to support technology transfer will promote the construction of technology transfer and innovation linkages between enterprises and scientists, organizations and networks in science and technology domestically and internationally.
According to some assessments, technology transfer activities in our country have achieved encouraging achievements but still have many limitations. Therefore, finding models to promote appropriate technology transfer in order to promote the developed technology transfer market is very important and necessary. In the world, the form of technology transfer is operated under many different mechanisms and organizational models. Based on reference to some technology transfer models in developed countries, the transfer model at VNUHCM can focus on developing technology transfer promotion organizations through institutionalization by promulgating a system of relevant direct and indirect legal documents. According to models in developed countries, technology transfer promotion organizations supported by legal documents have made many positive contributions in promoting technology transfer activities in order to transform scientific and technological achievements into life for the country. Moreover, organizations promoting technology transfer also need to have a diversity of types and a wealth of operational content to form a complete system from investment search and product perfection to the promotion of output in addition to the trading floor in science and technology. Moreover, in order for technology transfer activities to be promoted effectively, technology transfer promotion organizations also need to have a close network of links with different organizations to support activities such as the Government, universities, research institutes, enterprises, technology transfer service organizations, financial institutions… At the same time, this organization also needs to promote building a network of links between domestic and foreign organizations to promote technology transfer activities through technology purchase, sale and investment activities. Another indispensable issue is the development of highly qualified and capable personnel to meet practical requirements. In Vietnam, technology transfer activities can be carried out through official transfer channels through intermediary organizations responsible for promoting technology transfer located in universities where the Technology Transfer Center (TTO) model is a typical example. This model is highly feasible when the Law on Intellectual Property allows universities to own the research results achieved using the State budget, from which the commercialization of these intellectual property is carried out by the university. However, in order for technology transfer centers to operate effectively, it is necessary to prepare for good internal resources along with a strong ecosystem that will promote the process of technology transfer in the country in the coming time.
In today’s era of globalization with the ongoing Industrial Revolution 4.0, competition among countries and businesses mainly relies on human resources and intellectual property, so the investment in human resources for scientific research and technology transfer is also an investment in sustainable development and also directly enhances the intellectual strength of the nation for a country in the future. Currently, the cradle for creating high-quality human resources as well as intellectual products for transfer for socio-economic development is mainly from universities and research institutes where there is a lot of investment in human resources and facilities with the expectation of solving practical problems. However, the current technology transfer in our country still has many limitations, not meeting expectations nor commensurate with existing potential due to the influence of many factors. Therefore, solving problems and finding models to invest and develop technology transfer in the coming time is very important in our country as the socio-economic situation in the country and around the world is volatile with many challenges and profound impacts on sustainable development. However, with the attention of the State and agencies at all levels as well as the readiness from universities to solve difficulties and find appropriate models, it will contribute to actively promoting the process of technology transfer in our country to a new level in the coming time.

University of Science and Technology, VNUHCM