End Course Review

TWC End of Course Review

The 13 week journey in TWC with Prof Shahi really broadened my horizons and benefitted me a lot. From being dumbfounded by Yali’s question at the start of course, I progressed to being able to provide some semblance of explanation to these inequalities.  I shall now give a brief summary of each topic, hopefully my humble explanation is adequate.

Introductory Session

Learnt about what is Technology, Science, Innovation, and Invention. Thereafter we were given an introduction to Yali’s question.

Technology- Knowing how to apply knowledge to solve problems

Science- The creation of knowledge

Invention- subset of innovation

Innovation- Invention is the first step in innovation, and the whole translation process in the market is called innovation

Technology, Society and Global Dominance

We learnt about the model of rising star, dominant player, and falling star and the characteristics of countries/companies/individuals in each category. Then we moved on to the impact of colonialism in shaping the development of countries today. These countries are able to keep themselves ahead because they exploit their colonies for resources.

Technology and Human Development

We defined development as generally change in a positive direction. Over the years, development has been happening in all areas(social, industrial, tech, cultural, economic, human), but increasingly,  sustainable development, ie development w/o negative consequences, have been increasingly important. Also learnt about human development in different areas such as 1. Health 2. Education 3. Income.

Technology and Industrial Development: Toward Sustainability

Industrial development has helped reduce the gap between developed and developing countries. This is due to their entry costs such as worker’s pay being lower than that of their counterparts. As a result they have a competitive advantage in the manufacturing industry over developed countries and can produce products at a lower cost. However countries like the US and South Korea are still ahead of the rest because they have shifted away from the manufacturing sector (labour intensive) to more knowledge and capital intensive industries. An example would be the mobile phone industry.

We thought that our industrialization would only have just a miniscule impact on Earth. However, (homeostatic) mechanism of Earth has been overstressed by human activity.

Eg. US- 5% population consume 30% of earth resources. If everyone consumed like this we would need 3-5 planets. Hence the need to go towards sustainable development. Also refers to going from linear to cyclical approach of consumption. We were then introduced to the many frameworks for sustainable development. Also talked about the benefits of developing late which means that these countries already have the template of development to follow and will not have to innovate much.

Technology and Innovation Management

We learnt that invention happens before innovation. And in innovation management, there is the R-D-A Translation process and the innovation creation pipeline. So the further we go from the translation process, there will be a higher chance of success.  And at the start of the translation process, more technical skills would be needed, while at the application stage, more management and business development is needed.

Drivers of World Change

The world’s processes are going from non- mechanised to mechanised and from energy intensive to sustainable development. So the drivers of change include Technological innovation, Social, demographic, cultural, ideological changes, Competition, Globalisation and Changing expectations with changing times. We also discussed Evolutionary and Revolutionary change, and the differences between the two.

Change Management and Change Leadership

Leadership V Management. Main difference is that one is proactive and other is reactive. So we must proactively manage change and use the modern model of continuous monitoring and renewable instead of the traditional freeze unfreeze refreeze model. Leadership is important as it could decide a developing country’s growth, especially when government do not make policies that are popular but instead focus on long term needs of the nation.

ICT and world change

Learnt about the evolution and change of many types if ICTs. They have the potential to empower people from developing countries with the tools to break out of their poverty cycle. Eg, Children with access to the internet can learn from outside advancements and gain knowledge capital. They can even innovate and come out with new things to change the world.

BioBusiness

We learnt how it can change the world through biomedical, agri-veterinary, environmental etc sectors. Already it takes up a huge proportion of global GDP and is expected to grow exponentially.

Energy and World Change

Our resources are limited and the true cost of fossil fuels are not factored in when we use them for buring. On top of monetary cost, there is opportunity cost as these fuels can be used for other more useful purposes. Then there is environmental pricing as we are actually polluting the environment. As such there is a need for all countries to adopt renewable energy and not only let the burden fall onto the developed countries.

Emerging and Future Technology

We were introduced to many emerging technologies and what were their drivers.

1.    Unmet market opportunity and need

2.    Growing tech know-how

3.    Supply creating demand

4.    Mass media and advertising changing our needs

5.    4 Smarts

Bottom line is that if we can imagine it, we can make it happen

Technology Development and Forecasting

We need to have the foresight to predict future trends as it will be where we are all heading to. Learnt about the many different tools used as well as between technology assessment, forecasting and foresight.

Final Remarks

This has been a fulfilling course where I have gained a lot of knowledge and insights from everyone in the class. Although the workload is rather heavy, I feel that the individual and group report really helps you to gain a better perspective on different matters. I have learnt to open my mind to more possibilities and not be too critical and deem something to be impossible. After all, never say never as change is the only constant. Thanks to Prof, TA, and all classmates!