On the evening of April 21, Mam Mam restaurant filled up with a roomful of people whose names regularly appear in any serious conversation about modern Vietnam.
Bankers, lawyers, founders, diplomats, Viet Kieu returnees, and long-staying foreigners gathered for the Ho Chi Minh City soft launch of 40 Years of Innovators, the new book by Sam Van and Sam Korsmoe.
Two weeks earlier, the authors had held a similar evening in Hanoi. The Saigon edition - co-hosted by Vietcetera and ticketed to raise funds for KOTO, the social enterprise started by one of the book's featured innovators, closed the loop on the country they had spent eighteen months writing about.
Over eighteen months, the authors conducted more than 70 interviews with over 50 people to produce profiles of 25 individuals who, in their framing, "made a difference" across the 40 years since Đổi Mới began in 1986. As Sam Korsmoe put it in the introduction, "This had never been done before in Vietnam. It was a dream job for this writer."
A Book About 'The Who'
The central argument of 40 Years of Innovators is disarmingly simple. The reforms of 1986, the authors write, "were just words on pieces of paper. They meant nothing unless there were people ready to act on these policies." Rather than rehash the mechanics of Đổi Mới, the book profiles the humans who took the policy and did something with it, across five generations and five distinct eras, from Early Đổi Mới through the American Embargo, Frontier Finance, Free Trade, and today's Covid-era leap into high tech.
Ambassador Nguyễn Quốc Cường, former Deputy Foreign Minister and Vietnam's Ambassador to the United States and Japan, agreed to write the foreword after reading the full manuscript. "On its own, Đổi Mới could not make a difference for Vietnam," he writes. "The people who took on the 'ideas' that emanated from the Đổi Mới policies and turned policy into action are the people who have made a difference for Vietnam."
On The Vietcetera Podcast
In the Vietcetera podcast episode recorded ahead of the Saigon launch, the two authors walked through the genesis of the book and what eighteen months of interviews had taught them. Sam Van - born in Saigon in 1978, a refugee to the United States in 1991, and a former executive in the International Listings Department at the New York Stock Exchange, talked about returning to Vietnam in 2007 and watching "a country in full motion."
Sam Korsmoe, who has reported on and lived in Vietnam for more than three decades, talked about the privilege of being let into the offices, homes, and favorite coffee shops of 25 people who rarely tell their full story in one sitting.
Between them, they settled on a thesis the podcast conversation kept returning to: that the metric most governments fail to measure, the ingenuity, conviction, and sheer stubbornness of the people behind a reform, is the one that actually explains how a $14 billion economy in 1986 became a $500 billion economy today.
In their own words
The strength of the book is in the quotes. A sampling, pulled roughly chronologically across the five eras, hints at the voice of a generation.
Madame Pham Chi Lan, long-time VCCI leader and advisor to two Vietnamese Prime Ministers, on where real reform actually begins: "The most important message that I want to send to people, particularly those abroad, was that the reforms in Vietnam started from the grassroots. This was where the first initiatives started."
Ken Atkinson, OBE - founder of Grant Thornton Vietnam, the man awarded Vietnamese national ID #000001 - on why he left a China consultancy for an unknown frontier in 1990: "Vietnam was a breath of fresh air in more ways than I could have ever imagined. The people were really nice and very friendly. I sensed that they were very open to new ideas and had an amazing work ethic."
Dominic Scriven, OBE, founder of Dragon Capital, on the contrarian bet that defined his first fund in 1994: "They [the other funds] were doing things with foreign invested companies. Whereas we said, we won't do that. We will only do that if we can't find Vietnamese business people to invest with. That's a very different mindset."
Don Lam, co-founder and CEO of VinaCapital, on why he traded a partnership track in Canada for a representative office in an embargoed country: "Maybe somewhat naively, I thought that I might be able to help. The more I read about what was happening in Vietnam back then, the more excited I got. The idea of going back was planted. Everything I read reinforced that Vietnam was where I was meant to be."
Jimmy Pham, founder of KOTO, on why the street kids of 1996 Saigon changed the trajectory of his life: "I knew one because I was one. I was no different than these street kids. I knew them because they were me and I was one of them. I knew then that I had to teach them whatever I could to get ahead in life."
Tieu Yen Trinh, founder and CEO of Talentnet, on the window she believes Vietnam is sitting inside right now: "Vietnam is at a 10-year diamond opportunity. From 2025 to 2035, we have a rare opportunity. We need to act on it now because after 10 years Vietnam will be aging."
And Loi Luu, who grew up in Vinh Phuc and became one of the architects of Vietnam's blockchain ecosystem, on the purchase that changed his family's life: "If they had invested that six million into real estate at that time, it would be worth like seven or eight billion today. I was the first kid in the village to have a personal computer at home."
What Comes Next
In his foreword, Ambassador Cường suggests Vietnam is now entering what some are calling Đổi Mới 2.0 - framed by the Era of the Nation's Rise, Resolution 68 on the private sector, and Resolution 57 on science and technology. The goal, in the country's own words, is to become a high-income nation by 2045.
That will take a new generation of innovators. If the Hanoi and Saigon launches are any indication, and if the 25 people profiled in this book are the proof of concept, Vietnam already has a template for how reform actually gets done. It isn't the policy. It's the person who reads the policy, decides it's possible, and gets to work.
40 Years of Innovators by Sam Van and Sam Korsmoe is published by Alphabooks. The Vietcetera podcast episode with the authors is available on YouTube.
