Seminar 3, 30/08/2010

Technology and Industrial Development: Toward Sustainability

“Sustainability requires a shift form linear to circular thinking
Old Industrial Model: Economic Development VS Environmental well-being
Sustainable Industrial Model: Economic Development AND Environmental well-being”

There is a false dichotomy between economic development and environmental well-being. I believe that economic development and environmental well-being can co-exist together with the advancements in technology today. Technology has enabled new alternative forms of technology like solar energy, wind energy, tidal energy etc to be discovered and used today. For example, 5 countries (El Salvador, Kenya, the Philippines, Iceland, and Costa Rica) as of 2004 have generated more than 15% of their electricity from geothermal sources. Geothermal power requires no fuel and hence does not harm the environment. Thus, with the use of alternative forms of energy, industries can still run and drive economic progress while doing little harm to the environment. It is true that green technology these days are still expensive and hence not widely use, thus these alternative sources of energy are not solutions for the trade-off between economic development and environmental well-being. However, I am optimistic that these alternatives will become cheaper and used more commonly in the future as improvements in technology cut down the costs of these green technologies.

There was an interesting point about the advantage of backwardness in Reading 2 which was discussed in class. Szirmai pointed out that “latecomers profit from the availability of modern technologies developed in the leading industrial economies, without bearing all the risks and costs involved in research and development.” I feel that this is exceptionally true, especially in today’s globalised world where information sharing is ubiquitous. Thus latecomer countries can just copy the innovation of their successful counterparts without having to fork out the money and time to go into R&D to develop it. Instead, they can use this money to innovate and improve on the current invention, thus coming up with a better product. However, I feel that the “advantage of backwardness” has its own limitations. Although the countries benefit from the invention due to the low costs involved, they might not know the invention inside out. After all, no one but the creator understands the invention best. Also, the latecomer countries might lose out in terms of the lessons learnt from the mistakes made and also the thought-process which resulted in the innovation. This situation is like a student copying the homework of his peer. He may be able to hand in the perfect piece of work but did he learn anything from that? Perhaps, the developing countries could tap on the advantage of backwardness to drive their economy. However, leading countries (i.e dominant players) should still innovate and be at the forefront of technological innovation, despite the advantages of being a latecomer.


Technology and Innovation Management

I liked the quote that Prof Gurinder posted on the powerpoint slide:
“Life is pretty simple:
You do some stuff.
Most fails. Some works.
You do more of what works.
If it works big, others quickly copy it.
Then you do something else.
The trick is the doing something else.”
- Tom Peters –

What spoke to me the most was the last line “The trick is the doing something else.” Innovation requires doing something else, thinking out of the box, creating and inventing something extraordinary, which may in turn bring benefits and convenience to Man. Sounds easy? Not. What is so tough about that you may ask? I believe it is having to accept failure (if your innovation does not work out) because failure is always a possibility with any attempt at innovation. This is one of the key takeaways from the lesson. I feel that having an open mind is imperative to our acceptance of failure because failing the first time doesn’t mean we would fail the second time. Thomas Edison did not succeed in his first attempt at inventing a lightbulb. Neither did Sir Timothy John Berners’ Lee succeed in his first attempt at creating the World Wide Web. They persisted. We too need to have the courage and determination to keep on trying till our innovation succeeds because there is a reason why the innovation did not succeed, thus we have to improve on it to make it work. This also brings me back to Session 2 where Prof Gurinder mentioned the characteristics of the rising star – open perspective, keen to invest in new ideas. I feel that the rising stars are not afraid of failure. Instead, they rectify the problem and keep trying. Hence, with the many new inventions they have, they race ahead of others be it in terms of GDP or the level of technology. On the other hand, falling stars who have a closed mind do not bother trying a second time because they think that if they have failed once, why wouldn’t they fail again? Thus, they do not innovate and hence they are on the road to doom.

Overall, I would rate the session 7.5/10. I like the fruitful discussions about sustainable development as this is an issue which is close to our hearts. Also, I felt that there could have been more discussions about innovative companies who fail and why did they fail.