Today, we visited two companies Coherent and Saigon High Tech Park. Coherent Corp. is a global leader in materials, networking, and lasers for the industrial, communications, electronics, and instrumentation markets. It was founded in 1971 to manufacture high-quality materials and optics for industrial lasers. The company operates in more than 20 countries around the world, including Vietnam. The Vietnam branch was founded pretty recently in the 2000’s. Coherent delivers innovations and aims to make the world more efficient. Coherent’s goal to expand from 1500 to 5000 employees by 2028 is ambitious, however, I do believe that this company would be a good candidate for expansion. Coherent was very fluid and organized and I think they would be able to get more machines and hire new employees to work those machines. I am most interested in how such a big branch of the organization got started in Vietnam and what the initial funding must of looked like to build such a large-scale and professional operation.
Next, we went to Saigon Hi-tech Park. Saigon Hi-tech Park is one of only three hi-tech parks in Vietnam and a trustworthy source for hi-tech investment. It aims to serve as Vietnam’s model of technological innovation, intellectual development, and innovation economy. I think the most significant part of the visit was the research and development portion of the hi-tech park and the different products that we got to observe and test out. I also thought their training center was very unique and a great opportunity for students to have hands-on experience at a technologically advanced company in a developing country. I think that it is quite different than in the US because we don’t have many programs that collaborate hi-tech parks and students. Ultimately, today was very informative and I enjoyed learning about the different companies we visited and how it has helped to increase globalization and development in Vietnam.
