The Governance of Knowledge: Perspectives from Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia

The paper revisits the concept of knowledge governance by drawing on the experience of building knowledge clusters in two countries; Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam. It explores the strategies by which a country may take up the governance of knowledge, in the context of avoiding the knowledge trap drawing on experiences of Southeast Asian countries. We posit that an investigation of knowledge governance would require a study of the formal and informal institutional arrangements allowing knowledge flows in a cluster. The flow of tacit knowledge in particular may still require spatial proximity. We move on to explore the different perspectives of learning from the strategies of building knowledge clusters in Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Peninsular Malaysia and Brunei Muara District - Brunei Darussalam. Our research builds the foundation for knowledge governance inquiry by studying the spatial distribution of manpower and the science network of universities, in this case Universiti Sains Malaysia, with external knowledge producing organizations. Learning from the experience of the Northern Corridor and Multi Media Corridor in Malaysia, we have discussed our preliminary analysis of knowledge clusters in Brunei Muara District - Brunei Darussalam. Results of the analysis highlights that indeed there is increasing clustering of organizations such as private companies and government agencies in Brunei Muara District yet knowledge sharing is still lacking. We intend to follow up the study of Brunei Muara District knowledge cluster by focusing on the ICT (Information Communication and Technology) knowledge base. We end with a summary on the conclusions and recommendations for developing a knowledge base in Brunei Darussalam.