Technology & Innovation Management

What is the most contagious parasite? 
"An idea" is what Mr Cobbs, the main character from the recent phenomenal movie 'Inception' claims the answer to this question is. An idea, he goes on to say, from the tiniest seed, spreads like a virus. How do we contain this virus? In our world where ideas are born every split of a second, what is the best way we can efficiently churn these ideas into realistic opportunities that bring world change? 


Breakthroughs in technology have reached astronomical proportions, this drives customers expectations up which in turn drives the need for more innovation. Companies now have to shift from the 'technology' age to the 'innovation' age. They not only have to manage manpower, they have to manage brain power. Manufacturing not only goods, but ideas. Accounting for not only monetary capital but intellectual capital. There is always a gap between the R&D and the application in the R-D-A process, something we learnt in class today. If we were to cover that gap, we would accelerate innovation, taking advantage of more business opportunities. Translating 'dreams' to reality, again reminding us of the movie inception. However, we can really draw lessons from the movie: 


Rapid growth, as we learnt from prof shahis value creation pipeline, always starts with a concept. If a concept, just remains a concept in our minds, then we are all stuck in 'limbo'. There is a process to take us there. This process includes technology validation, 'productization' and business case validation. As we can see, many different groups of people are needed to transform an idea into reality. In the movie, Inception needed the team effort of various different individuals: the extractor (I call in real life, the inventor), the architect (I call the designer), the chemist (I call the scientist or anyone involved in the technological creation aspect), the forger (I call the businessman!), the tourist (I call the investor). If you watched the movie and loved it, you'd probably be agreeing with me right now! But if you haven't, my point is, that for an idea to come to life, we need the collaboration of many (the inventor, the designers, the IT people, the salesman etc etc.). 


As brought up by prof Shahi, we are in the age of collaboration, not competition. Alliances are the way to go, if you fear  a competitor, get him on your side. Not that firms should encourage their employees not to rise above the competition. However, as learnt in last weeks topic of globalization, the interdependence of countries and economies are rising extra-ordinary levels, we are becoming a global village where we leech on a single idea, copy it, improve it and move on to the next. No one can survive alone. Also, as quoted in reading 3, "It is in the understanding of interdependance across all borders and a shared mission, that we can begin to view the global enterprise as an innovation system of expertise which promotes the collective wisdom unachievable by any entity individually"


I wish I had sat in class G8, where there was a presentation on "Goodbye to Google Wave". Something that has puzzled me recently, how something so brilliant could be ignored by the whole world, simply brushed aside. I would think that in this virtual age, something that could revolutionize email, would have spread like wild fire in the cyber world. I was quick to ride the wave when I first found out about it (Wow, finally time for a change in the way we do email, I thought) only to have the wave die out on me. I never really used my account at all, simply because no one else was signing up on Google Wave! I was not surprised when I heard the news of its closure. This is a classic example of how a concept with excellent technology validation, could not realize its market potential, without the proper business strategies. Or is this what we have been discussing about in previous lessons- People were simply to comfortable using their current email accounts that there was no need to enter the painful, yet necessary, process of change. The resistance to change of the people over-ruled the brilliance of the technology. 


I'll end of with a small extract from my all-time favourite movies, V for Vendetta.
"We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught. He can be killed and forgotten. But four hundred years later an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed firsthand the power of ideas. I've seen people kill in the name of them; and die defending them." - Evey Hammond, in V for Vendetta


Class rating: 8

Technology, Society & Global Dominance

He who rules the media writes history. A disturbing thought but a sound argument. Is history what I read in textbooks, in the newspapers, in published journals, what I watch on television? Or are they printed lies disguising atrocities hard to swallow. Have I been "euro-centralised" without even knowing it? Was the education system that I grew up in modeled after western structures, causing me to undermine critical facts of history and make non-substaintial assumptions about the positive consequence of colonial rule?


These were the questions that surfaced in my mind upon reading Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's article on the Colonial Holocaust and its legacy. It opened my eyes to a new point of view, a non "eurocentric" point of view. It made me ponder on the fact that the comfortable life I am living now could be a product of this "legacy". I never knew the story of Christopher Columbus well, other than the fact that he was a national hero. America has been taught to celebrate Columbus day, a representation their freedom and their progress, which makes you wonder how much the media has blinded them to the truth, for how could something achieved through genocide and the brutal slaughter of our own human race be something worth celebrating? This is the cruel state of our world; we celebrate marginalization, we celebrate inequality, we celebrate the elites. Have we really progressed when 80% of the worlds wealth is being consumed by the richest fifth of the population? 


An interesting fact in the article that I was not aware of initially was that prior to colonization, much of the continents that eventually became victims to western conquest, were advancing economically and politically. They were doing fine on their own. There are many claims that the global dominance of the British and Americans was what brought many countries out of poverty and stagnation, however what they did was to replace a country's idea of development with their own idea of development, out of self-serving political interests and their thirst for power and material wealth.


I am careful not to overlook the benefits that have come with colonization and I don't want to appear ungrateful. The university I study in, is a product of the American system. The estate I live in, was beautified by the British during Colonial rule. The article has just broadened my perspective to what could have been. We will never know what our world would be like at present without Colonial influence. I was glad that Clement in his presentation argued against the notion that unipolarity is a bad thing, offering us a perspective from the flip side of the coin. The illustration of the double-edged sword arises again. There are those who gained from it, however there are also those who suffered and are suffering immensely because of it. There certainly lies a problem, question is, are the people who benefited going to do something to solve the problem?




So here we are today, and we can go on complaining about the injustice brought about by the hands of blood-thirsty and power-hungry man. I am not condoning the immorality of the Colonial troops on the indigenous people in the many native lands that were invaded. My heart goes out to the countless lives that could have stood for so much more but were wiped out by the greed and selfishness of their fellow man. As quoted in the article:“There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man’s notion that he is less savage than other savages.” However, the stories of the past should only serve to spur us on in the fight for a better future. Applying here my favourite quote by Mahatma Gandhi: BE the change you want to see in this world! 

It was brought up in the class discussion by one of the students that our world would be a better place if countries were to stop pressing for their own economic goals. I would definitely agree with her. However, I would use the word self-serving goals instead of economic goals. Economics, is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. Economics should be the solution to marginalisation and not the course of it. Is our resources being distributed to the people who really need them? Or is quest for excess bringing our world down in flames? There is enough freshwater and food to feed the planet, so where are the economists when we need them? Probably striving for a better pay cheque. 

We're all guilty of this crime.

Class rating: 9

The Rise of Civilizations

Brief Overview

"Who moved my cheese?" is a book about how we deal with change in our lives.  The "Cheese" represents everything we strive for in life. In this book, four mouse-like characters are scurrying through a maze to find their "cheese". The maze represents the place we are in, be it the living community, school, or whichever organization we belong to. At the end of the story, some characters are more successful in adapting to change and thus finds the cheese they are looking for.

Change is inevitable. And our fast-evolving world is like a maze. It is how we cope with change that determines whether we grow or remain stagnant. This is why some societies flourish while others lag behind. Technology is available, but are the people embracing it?

Observations & Takeaways
"Technology is easy, people are hard" this was the phrase that provided the backbone to our first TWC class. I saw this first hand when I visited Sri Lanka a month ago. There I saw slums, I saw beautiful building structures, I saw slums built around beautiful building structures. Why is no one cleaning up the streets? I met the people there who made bricks for a living, not even knowing what a cement mixer looked like. Yet I also met bankers, fluent in English, who added us on Facebook a mere 10 minutes after we met. In the 1960s, Singapore used to model after Sri Lanka, the Pearl of the Indian Ocean, but ever since the country was wrecked by civil war, the country took a huge step backwards, allowing Singapore to advance beyond it by leaps and bounds. The country, its people so full of innovation and highly-skilled in craftsmanship, went from a leader of change to a victim of change.

That leads me to an observation. Something in common about the societies throughout history that thrived on change was the presence of a strong & visionary leader. For the Romans, there was Caesar, for the Egyptians, there was Pharaoh and of course for Singapore, there was Lee Kuan Yew. In the video we watched 'Guns, germs & steel', three factors of change was brought up when looking at societies like the Roman and Egyptian empires;

1. Advance in Technology
2. A Large Population
3. An Organized Workforce

All these 3 factors needed to be glued together by leader. A leader that sees beyond the horizons of practicality, yet is able to manage an organize his plans to the minor detail. Yes, innovation needs to be systematized too. One of the qualities often describing a good leader is that he is a catalyst for change. History tells us that societies grew because they had a leader that was a driver of world change, and who was not afraid to ride the wave of technology. This is one of the answers I would give to the burning question asked by the Papa New Guineans repeatedly in the video "Why you white people have so much cargo, and we don't?"

However, we might have noticed by now, that Singapore has done without one of these factors- A large population. This shows how technology has become so advanced in the recent century that it has eased the burden of manpower, creating substitutes for human labour. A man needs to do less, to achieve more.  This brought us to our next heated argument:        


Is technology a hazard to human health? Is this cyber age, where the world is at a man's fingertips, causing the degradation of the human body?

It is true, as generations pass, that the body is less hardy than what it used to be. This is evident in our military, where the training has gotten much easier physically as the years go by, yet the number of health problems and even deaths due to training are ever rising. Too much TV and video games? A cruel consequence of technological advancement in multimedia? Yet this is only the flip side of the coin. Technology has also made exercising (not only eating) more efficient. A person who makes the effort to take care of his body, has the supplements and equipment more available now then in the past to do so effectively. A modern day swimmer can swim at speeds faster than anyone that came before. World records are being shattered over and over again. Training techniques involving technology has made that possible. Sports shoes are being manufactured that are lighter, quicker, and better for the feet.

Choices. Choices determine destiny, not technology. And change and improvement is simply a consequence of that choice. Should we then resign to our fat, I mean fate? No. We can do something about it. Right now, it is easier to buy a burger from McDonalds, rather than cook a healthier meal at home. Therefore, what we need to do is to make these better options more available and accessible.  The gym should be easier to get to then the LAN gaming shop. Health products at present are being priced so high, it makes being unhealthy more cost efficient. If we don't do something about it now, we're in danger of decreasing our average life expectancy to even smaller digits.

Issue for further discussion
We use technology to maximize our time, to increase our efficiency, so that we can achieve more in a day and by getting our hands less dirty. But what good does it do us if it is killing us faster? Making life shorter, thus decreasing the time we have? The irony of it all.

Class Rating: 9