Conclusion

Structural change has been a significant contributor to Vietnam’s impressive growth experience over the past three decades. Labour has moved rapidly from agriculture into manufacturing, with important improvements in livelihoods as the result. The private sector has played a key role in this success story, and especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have shown the necessary dynamism to adapt to an economic policy and institutional reform design, characterized as decentralized experimentalism. This dynamism of private SMEs has played a crucial role for the pace of diffusion of experimental successes—upstream and downstream along the value chain. Whether this success will carry into the future when innovation of new technologies and productivity growth will have to become core drivers of Vietnam’s growth prospects stands out as a major challenge for future success.