Evolving Brunei Darussalam’s economy towards technology-based industries

Technology-Based Industries continue to be at the forefront of a nation’s sustainable economic development. These account for the largest share of employment, business activity and labour income in most primary sectors. Technology-Based Industries contribute to multi-lateral development of a nation’s economy through innovation, new technologies and use of new knowledge. The government of Brunei Darussalam sought in the past decade to diversify the economy with limited success. Oil and gas and government spending still account for most of Brunei’s economic activity. The small size of the domestic market discourages foreign direct investment in Brunei Darussalam. Brunei’s government encourages foreign investment especially when it involves emerging new technologies and technology transfers. The research question is: how to transfer new technologies into Brunei Darussalam industry and to quantify the impact of these Technology-Based Industries; can a resource based-economy offer a solution to tackle the difficulties in industrial advancement that Brunei Darussalam is currently struggling with. This research aims to study factors for the successful transfer of technology-based industries and identify the key issues in technology transfers that significantly affect the rate of technological integration and evaluate the concept of technology transfers and its contribution to the sustainable economic development of a small state economy. It adopts multiple techniques both inductive and deductive approaches through SWOT-analysis and case studies to explore and later analyze the importance of the visionary drive underlying the technology-based industrial strategy that contributes to policy improvement, via awareness of alternatives and discovery of latent policy constraints and opportunities from investigation of others’ experience. The bottom line of this research is to provide the basis for government policies on how the technology transfer can be achieved in the Brunei Darussalam industrial context KEY WORDS: technology-based industry, foreign direct investment, technology transfer, SWOT-analysis, case study