Indonesia Finds Unicorns Breed Best Without Help
Too poor to try (and fail) to pick champions, the state let the private sector build Gojek and other winners. Will there be more?
A Gojek motorcycle driver in Jakarta is an emblem of Indonesia’s private-sector innovation culture.
Photographer: Dimas Ardian/BloombergWhat does the communications minister of a vast, multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation do at work? Rudiantara kills fake news. Just ahead of the presidential election verdict in May, the Indonesian minister, who uses one name, had to deal with as many as 600 social-media hoaxes in a day. The usual average is about 100, he tells me.
But if the internet’s potential to act as a hate machine poses considerable risks to a democracy barely 20 years old that’s grappling with rising Islamist assertiveness, the rewards it offers the world’s fourth-most populous nation are also enormous. And that’s Rudiantara’s other day job: helping breed unicorns.