Dhanin Chearavanont, chairman of Charoen Pokphand Group (CP), the country's leading agro-industrial conglomerate, has suggested that governments and businesses in Asean rely more on technology to compete globally.
"The world is changing," Mr Dhanin told the Nikkei Asia 300 Global Business Forum. "Industry will gear towards the Industry 4.0 era. It's an opportunity for Asean countries to transform ourselves. It's necessary to use advanced technology, even in developing countries."
Business leaders must be responsive to technological changes, he said. For example, the automotive industry is now working around the clock on electric vehicles and driverless cars, often with the use of robots to replace human labour.
CP is gearing toward this trend by building its factory without human labour, or using just a few workers in Europe and working on biotechnology with several universities to invent quality products, he detailed.
"We're not worried about global food shortages, but we have concerns that the food supply will be in surplus," Mr Dhanin said.
Industry 4.0 has presented CP with opportunities in Asean, especially as the government has also revised laws and increased incentives to attract foreign investors bearing technological advantage.
Mr Dhanin said Japan makes substantial technological developments, and it can become the world's largest economy one day if Japanese business leaders take more investment risks to support its expansion.
Although CP stresses technological development, people are also an important factor to support the growth of businesses in the long term, he continued.
The group built its training centre for leadership to develop human resources and cash in on the rapid change of technology. Knowledge from former General Electric chief executive Jack Welch will be applied for the betterment its top executives.
"For CP, nothing is more important than human resources, if we can't develop enough people, we won't be able to expand. Don't worry about unemployment from robots replacing humans, as humans will work in areas robots cannot perform in," Mr Dhanin said.
With an interest in Japanese technological developments, Mr Dhanin meets with executives of Itochu Group, a leading Japanese conglomerate, every three months to exchange business views and explore new opportunities together. With perspectives from its worldwide network, Itochu provides fresh examples for CP.
"Itochu thinks differently from other Japanese companies, and working with it will help us hone leadership," Mr Dhanin said. "At CP, we are daring enough to allow our executives to face investment risks, and lose one or 10 billion baht. However, executives also have to solve the problem and bring back in the amount they lose."
He acknowledged that the group is conducting three large research projects, and one may involve developing food for ageing people.