The mission of transferring knowledge and building national capabilities is no longer an aspiration for Vietnamese universities; it has become a clear policy imperative. Politburo Resolution No. 57 identifies science, technology, innovation, and digital transformation as key drivers of development, while Politburo Resolution No. 71 calls for higher education institutions to become centers of research, innovation, and entrepreneurship, playing a leading role in national and regional innovation ecosystems.
A major university, therefore, should be judged not only by publications and rankings but by harder questions: Can it help the country master strategic technologies and tackle major development challenges? Do businesses turn to it for answers to complex problems? Can it work with governments, from identifying challenges to testing and refining reforms? And when society faces new challenges, can it become part of the solution?
This mission does not replace teaching and research or turn universities into short-term service providers. Rather, it takes both to their ultimate purpose: transferring knowledge and building national capabilities.
Enabling universities
For knowledge to reach its full value, a university must first define where it needs to go and what capabilities it should create. University knowledge needs to be translated into four pillars the country needs: technological self-reliance, corporate management capabilities, institutional quality and the State’s capacity to implement policy, and a culture of innovation and development.
At the foundational level, university knowledge must help build the country’s technological capabilities. A country can purchase machinery, production lines, or usage rights, but it is much harder to buy technological autonomy. Critical elements such as core principles, designs, data, materials, source code, integration capabilities, and the ability to upgrade are often retained or transferred only under certain conditions. Universities’ contribution, therefore, should not stop at producing prototypes or handing over equipment.
At the operational level, university knowledge should strengthen corporate management capabilities. Modern technology does not automatically create productivity, nor does data automatically produce sound decisions. Many Vietnamese businesses are highly adaptable and resilient, but these strengths still depend heavily on individual experience.
At the institutional level, university knowledge needs to be translated into the capacity to design and implement policy. Universities should not simply stand outside government to analyze or critique; they can work alongside public agencies to identify bottlenecks, design mechanisms, test models, and measure results.
At the deepest level, university knowledge must help build a culture of innovation and development. Technology, management, and institutions are unlikely to create sustainable strengths without an environment that respects knowledge, values execution discipline, encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, and embraces experimentation. Universities foster such an environment by educating people, generating ideas, nurturing high-quality debate, and bringing Vietnam’s development story into the global knowledge stream. This is also an important foundation of national soft power.
Each university, depending on its strengths and position, must identify the fields in which it can lead, the missions in which it should participate, and the partners it needs to complement its capabilities. The clearer the positioning, the more resources can be focused, accountability established, and impact measured.
But identifying where knowledge needs to go is only the first step. The greater challenge is building mechanisms that allow knowledge to complete the journey from research to application and generate tangible impact.
Beyond project-based thinking
The biggest bottleneck lies not only in a lack of funding or mechanisms, but in how the journey of knowledge is organized. Many research tasks still follow a familiar sequence: propose a project, conduct the research, complete the evaluation, and only then look for a place to apply the results. When the end-user appears only at the final stage, the product can satisfy the paperwork while failing to match real-world needs.
To change this, universities must shift from “project” thinking to “mission program” thinking. Major challenges involving strategic technology, urban management, public data, business productivity, or the cultural industries cannot be solved through short-term projects. They require multi-year programs in which research, training, experimentation, technology transfer, and talent development are designed as parts of a single process.
For such programs, businesses, local governments, or agencies that will use the results must be involved from the outset: jointly defining the problem, providing data, creating testing environments, offering feedback, and adopting the results. Universities organize interdisciplinary teams to design solutions; end-users help validate them; and results are measured and refined before being scaled up. Transfer is no longer a “final step,” but an ongoing process throughout the mission.
Policy and practice labs can provide an important structure for this approach. They do not necessarily require a new building, but rather a structured collaborative space where real-world problems are tested, real data is used, and real-world impact is assessed. For the social sciences, economics, management, and public policy, they are the equivalent of laboratories in engineering and the natural sciences.
Making knowledge impactful
A common mistake is expecting scientists to excel at research while also understanding markets, managing projects, navigating legal and intellectual property issues, raising capital, finding partners, and taking products to end users. The journey is too long for one person to carry alone. Without professional support, many promising results remain in the laboratory or in project files.
Universities need professional teams specializing in program management, technology and knowledge transfer, intellectual property, data, legal affairs, finance, and partnership development. These teams should do more than handle procedures. They need to connect needs with expertise, design partnership models, manage risks, and stay involved until results are put to use.
Interdisciplinary mission teams also need enough authority to coordinate people, funding, data, laboratories, and partnerships. If every decision must pass through multiple layers, administration will always move more slowly than innovation. The goal is not another layer of management, but a reallocation of authority, resources, and accountability around the problem to be solved.
However, working closely with real-world needs does not mean universities should do the work of government or business. The government sets priorities and creates the policy space; businesses organize production, take on market risks, and scale solutions; and universities organize knowledge, train people, design solutions, and work with partners until they are validated. Clear boundaries enable deeper cooperation without diminishing each party’s distinctive role.
Empowering universities
For universities to move beyond project-based thinking and bring knowledge into practice, they need authority commensurate with the missions they undertake. The government, local authorities, and businesses should define the problems to be solved, select capable universities or university alliances to lead, and give them the autonomy to organize interdisciplinary teams, mobilize experts, access data, allocate resources, and test solutions within a clear framework.
Autonomy must come with verifiable accountability. Each program should define the problem, end-users, milestones, capabilities to be developed, and impact criteria. Universities should not be judged only on completed projects, publications, or delivered products, but on tangible outcomes: Is the technology being improved? Are businesses operating more effectively? Are policies being implemented better? Is knowledge creating value for society?
Funding and evaluation mechanisms must therefore shift from controlling inputs to assessing the full chain of results. Promising solutions should have opportunities to be tested, with “first users” enabled through commissioned projects, pilots, or innovative public procurement. Resources should be allocated in stages and be tied to intermediate results and real-world feedback, rather than provided once and assessed only at the end.
Evaluation should not end when a product is delivered. Results should be tracked after the project to determine whether the solution is actually being used and whether the recipient can operate, improve, and scale it. Only when knowledge produces sustainable, lasting change can the transfer process truly be considered complete.
Vietnamese universities do not lack ambition or meaningful research achievements. What is missing is a strong enough architecture to take those achievements from research to real-world impact. This mission does not begin with another center or cooperation agreement, but with the ability to identify real problems, mobilize the right forces, gain the authority to experiment, and be held accountable for real results.
The ultimate test for Vietnamese universities is not simply the number of international publications or their global rankings. It is whether, when the country needs to master a technology or find new development ideas, businesses need effective management models, governments need workable policies, or society faces new challenges, universities become trusted sources of knowledge or merely remain on the sidelines, observing and commenting.
(*) Dr. Pham Manh Hung and Dr. Ma The Ngan are from the Institute of Business Administration under the University of Economics & Business (UEB), Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU).
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