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SEAN will need to find innovative solutions to achieve its common visions while bracing for a new world of constant and sweeping changes.

The region has become an attractive investment destination and a regional player looking to cement its presence on the global stage.

“One of the strategic goals we have under the ASEAN Economic Community [AEC] is to have a competitive, innovative and dynamic ASEAN,” ASEAN deputy secretary-general AKP Mochtan said on Wednesday. “But [innovation] doesn’t come as it is; we need to see the reality and [ask ourselves] how do we create innovation?”

The AEC is one of three pillars of the ASEAN Community, the other two of which are the political-security and socio-cultural communities.

Mochtan said he believes that it boils down to how innovation is spread through multi-stakeholder forums such as the Kellog Innovation Network (KIN) ASEAN.

This year’s seventh annual two-day KIN ASEAN Forum features local and international speakers, including Robert C. Wolcott, the executive director of KIN Global, Satoru Matsuzaki, the president of Ryohin-Keikaku Co. (Muji), Pertamina COO Ahmad Bambang and Market Maker CEO Celeny Da Silva.

These and at least 25 other speakers will share their perspectives on ASEAN’s place in the global conversation, facilitating strategies and management dialogue to help foster innovation.

The forum touches on a number of relevant issues, such as the recent economic, geopolitical, technological and demographic shifts taking place in and around ASEAN, and will feature multi-faceted approaches to innovation, with a presentation from terrorist-turned-justice-collaborator Nasir Abbas as the highlight.

Nasir, who is now an entrepreneur, is expected to speak about innovations in dakwah (religious propagation) on Thursday.

Jose AM Tavares, the Foreign Ministry’s director-general for ASEAN cooperation, lauded the forum for its novel approach to cognitive stimulation and hoped that such innovative processes could be applied equally to all ASEAN citizens.

For him, a simmering question remains: How can stakeholders spread innovation and stimulating dialogue to those people and businesses in the regions, where the promises of the AEC have barely registered, if at all?

“Forums like this occur at a higher scale, but how can we help our SMEs on the lower levels?” the diplomat said on the sidelines of the KIN ASEAN event.

“Well-educated businesspeople may be able to absorb such knowledge and become more creative, but micro-entrepreneurs from the villages may not even think that far.”

As a region that is home to more than 630 million people, most of ASEAN people and businesses are barely within the reach of globalization.

Jose said that a tailored approach to different subsets of society is required and that it was up to each ASEAN member state to clearly translate strategic goals like innovation.

One example of the kind of multi-faceted innovation Indonesia needs is shown through the work of Jonathan Wilson, associate dean of the Richmond American University in London and a regular KIN participant.

Wilson currently advises the Tourism Ministry on how to leverage Indonesia’s multicultural background and Muslim majority to create a brand image promoting halal tourism.

For Indonesian SMEs to survive and break into the regional markets, the branding guru suggested that they cast their nets farther abroad when expanding their networks.

“I think Indonesia has the people, the capacity, but it [needs to be] smart about it and innovate in a very entrepreneurial way,” he told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.