Session 3 – Sustainable Development and Innovation Management

Brief Overview/Summary

This session of TWC focuses on the topic of “Sustainable Development” and “Technology and Innovation Management”. Historically, mankind has developed a destructive development model, in which economic profit was the ultimate interest of all development. Such model of development was not just disastrous to the survival of human, but it also salvages much of the resources available in our environment.

On the other hand, we are also discussing about the importance in creating values by translating theoretical concepts into practical products and services. Why did Apple become so famous with their innovation in iPhone and iPad? Why did it fight so aggressively with Samsung in a lawsuit for protecting the patents in its technology?

Therefore, this week of lesson discusses about the importance of sustainability issues and technological innovation in bringing changes to the world.

Interesting Observations and Ideas

1) Thinking from linear model to cyclical model – a more environmental friendly approach. Much of our history has shown that we’ve cared so little about our environment for the sake of industrialization. Human factors are the main causes of major Industrial disasters, such as Bhopal disaster, Minamata disease, and the Chernobyl incident. What drives us to sacrifice so much of our environment? Market competition, greed, or just pure laziness?

I guess many of us can relate it back to our daily waste-management system. How many of us bother to apply waste-hierarchy model (reuse, reduce, recycle) to our daily routine? Well, for myself, I will implement such an eco-friendly initiative only when it is convenient for me to do so. When I want throw away a can or bottle of drink, I will not bother to find a recycle bin when there is a nearer rubbish bin that I can reach.

Fortunately, there is a “cleaner” culture in Singapore, where I can still see a reasonably clean view of Singapore River compared to some of the most polluted rivers in neighbouring countries. At least, majority of Singaporeans will not anyhow throw rubbish on the road or vandalise the surrounding environment. However, sustainable development goes far beyond maintaining a clean environment. There should be more focus on retaining or renewing environmental resources, where we can start from a personal level by reminding ourselves to shift from a habit in using unrecyclable materials to a culture of reusing/recycling waste materials proactively.

2) Internalize the externality. How much does a can of coke mean to you? How much does it cost to our environment? It might just cost you less than two dollars, but it may take more than twenty years for nature to decompose them, and it will be even more disastrous if major industrial factories do not manage their waste of production appropriately.

Theoretically, the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Triple-Bottom-Line may be able to address such issue by balancing economic priority with environmental consideration. However, in the context of Singapore, statistical research by Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) in 2008 has shown that out of 507 Singapore-based enterprises surveyed on their awareness of CSR, only 40% of the participants are aware of such term.

Many of our enterprises are not even aware of the concept of CSR, let alone implement it. Nevertheless, we can take one great example from Banyan Tree, a Singapore-based company, which has a large chain of resorts and hotels around the world. Banyan Tree has always been the company who walks-the-talk in term of CSR, as shown by some of its corporate projects from Greening Communities to Conservation Lab, which manages sustainable development in the community where the company operates. If more companies can learn from Banyan Tree in term of their commitments in CSR, I think that they can more productivity and profit returns for their involvements in environmental, economic, and social development.

3) Idea is like a dream, application is reality, and the translation from a dream into reality is a NIGHTMARE! As a freshman in SMU, I am exposed to enormous amount of ideas and concepts, which contain great values to the world. However, as what the quote said, we are still in a dream! As long as all those concepts are purposely learnt for pursuing academic certification, we will not contribute any constructive roles in the development of the world.

On the other hand, we often give up too easily or even have no guts to start realizing our dreams (this is even worse than having nightmare). Just to share a personal experience, I often discuss a lot of ideas about web development with my roommate, such as crowdsourcing, social-enterprise, and educational platform with the application of web technology that can be done with practically zero cost. However, more often than not, those ideas just survive merely in paper, and never got translated into reality.

So, what should I do? I still have no idea in how to become a trend-setter like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckenberg, but definitely I know that it takes more than just technical knowledge and gutsy feeling to become a successful innovator. To sum it up in a theoretical manner, we need the involvement of partnerships, investment, ideas, and small amount of luck to put every pieces of concept into practical application in life.

Key Take Away Points

1) Much of the main learning points have been mentioned above. In the context of Singapore, we often take things for granted, partly due to the contribution of government in managing a sustainable urban development for Singapore. However, more attention needs to be invested in increasing individual and corporate awareness of the importance in sustainability issues. After all, we live in a holistic community, where different roles contribute important pieces of efforts to the outcome in sustainable development of the world.

2) The trick is to do something else! As mentioned above, we need to put enormous efforts to come out with an innovation. The best part is that after the emergence of popular innovation, competitors will start to imitate each other’s ideas with their own designs to come out with their own products. This will not only increase the competitiveness level in the market, but it will also trigger legal issues, as shown by the case of Apple vs Samsung. Therefore, in the reality, we cannot just depend on a single innovation; we must be able to do more different things compared to the competitors, so that we will always be in the competitive position.

Issues for Further Discussion

Having elaborated so much on the topic of this session, I still have no exact clue about the way to translate the concepts that we have learnt into the practical world. Therefore I will always ask myself and also everyone of you who read this blog: “So, what now? What MUST I do for the next step? TWC is teaching us about the changes in the world, so what MUST I change now in order to become the next Steve Jobs?”

Personal Ratings for Session

I would like to rate this session 8.5 / 10 because of the interesting concepts in sustainable development, and general view about technological innovation. It can be better if there is more sharing of the current trend of development in both topics.

Session 2 – The Role of Technology in Human Development

Brief Overview/Summary

In this week of TWC, we are discussing on the topic of Human Development. Most of us, in the modern society, often take things for granted. From the development progress in the history, we have different level of life expectancy as pointed in one of the video of “The Progress in Human Development”. Although mortality rate has declined greatly after the end of world war and the gain of independence for colonized countries, inequality still serves as a huge gap in the human development of the world. In this session, we explore some of the methods that can be used to provide equal opportunities for the world by using the advancement of technology.

Interesting Observations and Ideas 

1) Knowledge = power. I was inspired by the idea of world domination as addressed with the terms – Pax-Romana, Pax-Britannia, and Pax-Americana, in which certain nation can control the world because of its advancement in certain knowledge or technology. Perhaps, this is why Singapore Government invests highly in education and research for its nation. The reason that Singapore can be the tiger of Asia is not because of its natural resource, but more because of its quality human resource, which is the result of investment of the government in providing sophisticated education system.

2) Hungriness for knowledge. If it is mentioned above that knowledge is equal to power, it will be naturally logical for countries to constantly to upgrade for more updated knowledge. From the example of Japan in the Meiji Era and China in the period of Zheng He’s great voyage, we have seen clear evidences that openness to new knowledge is critical to the advancement of a nation. In term of a personal development for an undergraduate like me, it is always useful to look beyond what the school teaches; we always need to compare academic knowledge to the latest trend happening in the world, so that we can be the eagle that always looks for new horizon.

Key Take Away Points 

1) The role of technology in human development. I was inspired by Coursera and Anonymous, in which they can apply the advancement of web technology in creating more equal position for people around the world. Although Anonymous proves to be destructive in some cases, this trend of anonymity demonstrates the ability of civilians to fight with unequal treatment by using the competitive advantage given by web technology. Perhaps one day, we should demolish ultra-expensive tertiary level of education with the opportunities provided by technology as shown by Coursera. I really do not see the value of university when we can gain higher level of knowledge in the web nowadays. Perhaps the most important outcome of university education is to get the certificate of graduation as a ticket to our first job, which is literally not worth the investment of our time and money.

2) Freedom of speech. Okay, these words are definitely not applicable to the context of Singapore, where there is practically no effective public-speaking platform, which is not heavily bounded by law. This is why we have alternative news media such as “The Online Citizen” to provide us with different perspective of information that will be censored by the official news provider because of certain reasons.

Although it is mentioned by Voltaire that there can be freedom of speech as long as there is no negative consequence to others, there will always be some different arguments on what the consequence is, based on different point of view (whether it is from the government or from the citizen). In this case, government will always be on the dominant side, where it controls what can we, as civilian, express in the public. Therefore, I hope that there can be further implementation of alternative news media or more advanced technology that can gather power of the crowds to provide us with the position to fight with the dominant government.

Issue for Further Discussion

Advancement of technology vs advancement of culture. Technology, as we might have known, is a double-edged sword. It depends on the people who use it, to be either constructive or destructive. For example, web technology serves as a platform for opening up information for all, but it can also be used as a source of bad information (violence, porn, misconception of ideas, etc).  Therefore, probably a certain level of understanding in the nation’s culture needs to be planted in a society before it can accept new level of technology. But, the question now is “do we go for the advancement of technology first or the advancement of culture? Or it can be done in parallel? What will be the outcome of either option?” I think that this question could enlighten our ideas about human development in the future.

Personal Ratings for Session

In my opinion, this session is filled with quality reading article and explanation on the topic of human development, as well as relevant peer presentation, which have deeply inspired me. Therefore, I give this session 8 / 10. It could be even better if there is more discussion on recent news for the topic of the week, rather than just focussing on the historical development of it.

Session 1 – “I have my gold, so F*** you”

First and foremost, no offense with the title.. Haha… I was really surprised by the jovial and critical personality of our MGMT002 – Technology and World Change (TWC) Professor, Mr Gurinder Shahi, especially when he unconsciously spouted the golden word as mentioned on the title above.

Jokes aside, I was kinda attracted by the self-introduction of Mr Gurinder in the part where he mentioned about some of the project he did with his study, which analyzes about the impact of foreign substance (mountain climbers, tourists, rubbish) to Mount Himalaya. Initially, I was thinking in my mind, “Who on Earth will study about some isolated mountain, which got nothing to do with our urban lives?”

Environment vs Profit

But then, I started to realize, like what the title said, most of us, in this civilized era, who strive for economic goal, might have ruined (f***ed) the environment, while pursuing for our “gold”. Technology has brought great benefits to the lives of mankind, but such changes must also be self-sustainable without sacrificing the abundant resources given by the environment. This is the first key concept I had gained from this class even before the main lesson started.

In this first session of TWC, we were introduced to the article and video titled “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond (JD). In his article, he argues about the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. He believes that environmental factors and geographical location of a country affect the supremacy of a nation more than the inherent abilities or intelligence of its society.

“Why you white people have so much cargo, and we New Guineans have so little?”

JD’s exploration began with a blunt question from Yali, a native New Guinean – “Why you white people have so much cargo, and we New Guineans have so little?” Cargo in this context refers to the material goods brought to New Guinea by westerners. Those cargoes were worshiped and regarded as the evidence of westerners’ superiority. In the eyes of the western colonials, the power of a nation was determined by race, in which the white people saw themselves as genetically superior than the natives.

Cargo brought by westerners was revered by New Guinean

However, JD, who has known several New Guineans with adept ability to survive in a harsh environment, thinks that such argument about racial superiority is absurd. There must be more in-depth explanations to the Yali’s question, a question that might be as old the history of human, which holds the key to explain modern civilization and a nation’s hegemony.

Therefore, in the attempts to answer Yali’s questions, JD sets on an adventure to explore the division of the world into those nations who “have” and “have not”. Why were ancient Egyptians able to build Pyramid while other nations still struggled for survival? How did Greeks develop an advanced civilizations? Why such inequality happens? (I guess the explanations will be clearer if you watch the video to the end… LOL)

The Evolution of Human: “from caveman to fatman”

On the other hand, we also studied about the timeline of time,  which briefly explains about the timeline of earth and its content from its creation period until the present. From the timeline, I can see some of the drivers of changes, whether they are great leaders or inventions, or even major catastrophes on the earth. In addition, we also observe general pandemic happening in the world where the number of obese people are increasing greatly as technology makes us more (in)efficient (the picture above describes the situation well). I guess that this timeline plays an important role to introduce us the essence of this module about technology, world, and change.

What I’ve learned currently will be outdated very soon!

In relation to the timeline, we also discussed about the future of changes, where we watched a video (Did you Know, Shift Happens) regarding the changes brought by globalization. The only constant in this world is change, where the speed of growth for technology is exponentially growing. We will soon see new inventions in the world being created in a matter of hours or even minutes. What matter most to me as a student is the constant update of knowledge, in which all the latest concepts I’ve learned currently will be outdated very soon in the future.

So, what are my key takeaways from this first session of TWC?

1) Technology is advancing, environment is deteriorating. While we focus on the advancement of technology for the benefits of human, we must not sacrifice the condition of the environment. – Sustainable Development

2) Geographical location and environmental factors affect the advancement of a nation. “Why you white people have so much cargo, and we New Guineans have so little?” – from Guns, Germs, and Steel.

3) Drivers of changes. Great leaders, inventors, or even major disasters may lead to huge shift in the world. – from Timeline of Time

4) Exponential growth of technological development. Technology develops faster than what we can imagine, and so do changes. The knowledge I acquired from this school will soon be obsolete in the future.

Overall rating for this session: 7 / 10. Some of the concepts are very interesting, but I think it can be more fruitful if there is a better time management for explaining the remaining key lessons (Reading 3 and Reading 4 on slide 2o).