Hello, let me introduce myself. I am Rahim Man, the Industry Manager of the fictional NISTI.
You may have heard about NISTI from my colleagues. Today, I would like to share the story from an industry perspective.
After all, if NISTI aims to strengthen industries, someone needs to represent the voice of industry.
Before I explain the Industry Component, let me briefly recap the NISTI concept.
As you may know, NISTI includes an in-house industry ecosystem as part of its overall design. Because of this, I am often asked what industries need most from Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).
Many people assume the answer is simple: more skilled workers.
While skilled workers are certainly important, I believe the real question is different.
How do we develop stronger industries?
My reasoning is simple. A stronger Demand Side creates greater demand for talent, skills, innovation, and workforce development. When industries grow, the Supply Side grows with them.
This distinction may seem subtle, but it changes everything.
Traditional TVET institutions are designed primarily to educate students. Success is often measured through enrollment numbers, graduation rates, certifications awarded, and graduate employability. Industry participates through internships, advisory panels, and occasional curriculum reviews.
From an industry perspective, however, our challenges go beyond recruitment.
We need industries that can grow, innovate, digitalize, adopt new technologies, improve productivity, and compete globally. We need stronger capabilities, not just more workers.
This is where the NISTI concept—and what we here call the National Economic Vehicle (NEV) mindset—becomes different.
Rather than operating as an education institution that serves industry, NISTI is a Government–Industry co-development platform (Co-investment). Its purpose is not simply to educate people, but to strengthen industrial capability through talent development, workforce transformation, innovation, and workforce intelligence.
Under the NISTI model, industry becomes more than a stakeholder. It becomes a customer, strategic partner, and co-owner of the ecosystem.
It exisits within the CAMPUS IN INDUSTRY MODEL or INDUSTRY IN CAMPUS VERSION.
The first is Talent Development, producing industry-ready technicians, technologists, specialists, and supervisors.
The second is Workforce Transformation, helping existing workers acquire new skills through upskilling, reskilling, and professional development.
The third is Innovation Capacity, providing access to applied research, prototyping facilities, testing environments, and collaborative projects.
The fourth is Workforce Intelligence, offering skills forecasting, workforce analytics, and talent pipeline planning.
Together, these mechanisms help industries build capability rather than simply fill vacancies.
However, none of this can be sustained unless NISTI is built on a viable operating model. If industry is expected to play a central role—particularly through the proposed in-house industry ecosystem—the institution must be supported by a business model that aligns the interests of industry, learners, and government.
A Different Business Model
What makes NISTI possible is a fundamentally different business model.
Traditional institutions depend largely on tuition fees and government funding. NISTI is supported through a partnership-based model (Government-Industry) that combines industry memberships, workforce subscription contracts, corporate training services, innovation projects, shared facilities, government grants, and strategic tax incentives. Student programmes remain important, but become one component within a broader industrial ecosystem.
Both must work together.
Traditional TVET may asks:
"How do we develop people for industry?"
NISTI asks:
"How do we develop industry through the right people?"
In this sense, NISTI is not merely preparing people for the future of work.
It is helping build the future industries that will create that work."
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