Lesson 3

This week we discussed about the technology and industrial development as well as innovation management.

Industrialisation

Historically, the suddenly explosion of prosperity in a nation is always attributed to industrialisation, starting with Britain, then the US then the 4 Asian Tiger (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong) and now the emerging economies like, China, Vietnam and India.

However, this happens always at a cost to the environment. There is currently no proven solutions to replace the traditional way of development. Developing have to sacrifice their environment for economic development.

The traditional linear development: raw materials to end product, without consideration of what happens during the process of getting the end product. These externalities such as pollution, wastage and environmental degradation are treated as externalities that are necessary sacrifices that people need to make to develop.

However people now realise that the planet's resources are finite. There is a push towards sustainable development. Thus we not have the cyclical development model: wastage and pollution are not longer externalities, but are internalities that have to be considered. Environmental sustainability is therefore tied to economic development.

Though there is a push for sustainable development and green technologies, unfortunately there is still no industry that is environmentally sustainable. Even industries such as biofuel, electric cars and NEWATER (recycled potable water), are not sustainable as the energy used for produce these products are not sustainable. Though these technologies are 'greener' than the older technologies they replace but these green tecnologies are still not sustainable.

Therefore, to truly be sustainable, energy needs to be from a sustainable. There are many good work towards a myriad of energy sources, from solar to nuclear, all create pollution in the process. Scientists are still searching for a truly clean and sustainable energy source.

Advantage of Backwardness

There is this interesting concept if the advantages of being a backward nation from a paper from the United Nations on Industrialisation as an engine of growth in developing countries by Adam Szirmai. It illustrates how developing countries such as the Asian Tigers, rode on the proven technologies of the developed countries post WWII to transform their economies and bring tremendous prosperity to its population. The developed countries have done through the difficulty of trying the technologies and prefecting it. Developing countries have the advantage of taking the technologies and leapfrog from there as there are little risk in those validated technologies.

The West also benefited from this advantage as they were emerging from the Dark Ages when they got many technologies from the Middle Eastern nations. More recently emerging countries like China and India has leapfrogged by using technologies validated in the West. However, countries realise that if they want to be a developed nation, they have to be at the forefront of innovation. To be 1st rate, they have to develop their own technologies through R&D. This is exactly what countries like China, India and Singapore are doing. Investing in R&D to develop their own technologies.

Therefore, developing nations enjoy this advantage but have to keep in mind that they have to develop their own innovation so that they can move up the value chain.

Low Cost and Easy to Use Green Tech

A presentation by one of my fellow classmate presented a very discussion. Should the rich provide the less fortunate with sustainable technologies?

There are many Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) that provide aid to less developed countries. The rich can donate to these NGOs to help the less fortunate. What interests me is that there are quite a lot of rather low cost green technologies that are available. It will be easy for the less developed countries to adopt these green technologies are they are not used to any of the not sustainable modern conveniences, thus are more like to adopt these green technologies.

An example of this can be solar power stoves. Such green technologies can help the people in these less developed countries and enable them to develop in a more sustainable way, killing two birds with one stone. We can definitley do more to encourage such NGOs to help developing countries to develop in a more sustainable way, as we can environmental sustainability is our responsibility too.