Johor is building a 7300-acre innovation hub on the Singapore border, offering ‘land and scale’ for its neighbor’s ‘capital and speed’

This is the question facing Datuk Syed Mohd Syed Ibrahim, president and CEO of Johor Corporation (or JCorp), the main development corporation in the Malaysian state of Johor. The region is home to a new special economic zone along the border with neighboring Singapore, hoping to leverage the city-state’s capital, talent and international connections to spur new investment in Malaysia.

“We are aware of the fact that the building blocks of the innovation ecosystem are not already in place in Johor,” Syed Mohamed explained during the Fortune Innovation Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Monday. “But in Singapore, there is.”

Citing successful case studies such as Barcelona, ​​Shenzhen and Silicon Valley, he identifies three factors that can lay the foundation for a successful innovation center: physical infrastructure, open digital infrastructure, and institutional framework, such as public-private partnerships and a regulatory sandbox.

However, JCorp saw an opportunity for Malaysia and Singapore to work together. “While Johor offers land and scale, Singapore offers capital and speed. So, this is the opportunity that I feel we need to capitalize on, where we can complement each other,” Syed Mohamed explained.

JCorp’s flagship project is Ibrahim Technopolis, a strategic development project of JLand Group, the real estate arm of JCorp. IBTEC has a total development value of RM27 billion ($6.5 billion), and hopes to tap into the massive growth potential of the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone, which Malaysia and Singapore agreed to early this year.

“At IBTEC, there is a big playground, so to speak, not only for the industry, but for the innovators,” he said.

Syed Mohamed has high hopes for IBTEC, which covers about 7,300 acres in Johor state. “Within five years, IBTEC will be a place where researchers, global companies and universities work alongside industries to address the challenges of food security, green energy and the digital future,” he suggested. “Within ten years, IBTEC will migrate to become not only an innovation hub, but a thriving innovation corridor.”

However, innovation is not an inexpensive process, as companies and workers may be out of work.

“Disruption is inevitable when we talk about economic growth dynamics, but we feel we have to be more humane,” Syed Mohammed said. “In fact, at JCorp I prefer to call it creative renewal, because when we disrupt, we have to make sure that, in fact, there is still opportunity for those who are going to be disrupted.

In particular, JCorp also hopes to benefit from the booming data center industry, which in turn is linked to increasing digitization and the use of artificial intelligence across the region and beyond. Malaysia has attracted billions in data center investments from major technology companies such as Microsoft, which hopes to take advantage of the country’s vast space and relatively more abundant resources.

Sayed Mohammed said: “We will work with partners to provide training courses in data center management.” “We will move towards creative renewal.”