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kills-focused training is one of the requirements for transforming Indonesia'€™s growth model that relies primarily on natural resources and cheap labor to one driven by productivity, which is generated by high-end technology, skills and services, says a new Asian Development Bank (ADB) report, released last week, entitled Innovative Asia: Advancing the Knowledge-Based Economy.

The other requirements include better tertiary education, big investment in information and communications technology, including universal broadband connectivity and a culture of research and innovation with strong intellectual property rights.

But, simultaneously, meeting the long list of requirements seems too tall an order for Indonesia to execute and it will take several years before any concrete results are felt.

However, investing more in skills-focused or vocational training facilities could be effective in quickly producing skilled and highly trained workers. Digital technology and global networking have boosted creative industries. Knowledge economies use information and communications technology (ICT), innovation and research, and higher education and specialized skills to create, disseminate and apply knowledge for growth.

Under the current system, too many university graduates in the country cannot find good jobs, so they have to settle for employment that does not require five years of university studies. They end up overqualified for the work they do.

Hence, the government and the private sector need to invest more in technical or vocational training to meet the rising market demand for technicians, as they do not require a five-year degree, only mastery over a particular domain of technical knowledge, which can usually be obtained in one or two years.

Companies or industrial associations need to be involved in designing vocational high school curricula. The skills taught should be based on industry standards, while the courses should be designed by businesses that need the graduates; a practice that Germany has implemented for decades.

Technicians are growing in importance. As digital equipment replaces the jobs of routine workers and lower-level professionals, technicians are needed to install, monitor, repair, test and upgrade all the equipment. Hospital and ICT technicians are needed to monitor ever more complex equipment; office technicians, to fix the hardware and software responsible for much of the work that used to be done by secretaries and clerks. Automobile technicians are needed to repair the software that now powers our cars; manufacturing technicians to upgrade the numerically controlled machines.

Accelerating the development of technical training at the high-school level and at higher learning institutions will also gear us up for the ASEAN Economic Community in early 2016, which will be marked by the free movement of skilled workers across the region.