INNOVATION: NAJIB HAS GOT IT RIGHT BUT

Innovation. Our prime minister has got it right when he said Innovation is the
way forward. Our oil is diminishing, our service economy is threatened by
China, tourism is not much a revenue, so what is left? Being an education hub
might be, but what can really attract a large group of international students if
not for the worldly-famous innovations coming out from our higher institutions.
So its all coming back to innovation, isnt? This paragraph only echoed what I
wrote two years ago (see post Kepentingan Mempunyai Universiti-universiti
Bertaraf Dunia, 5
th
of February 2009):

disebabkan ketiadaan teknologi asli kepunyaan Malaysia untuk dijual, ketika
ini negara kita hanya menjalankan urus-niaga bersifat perkhidmatan
(services) dan orang tengah, (selain aktiviti-aktiviti konventional seperti
pertanian dan penjualan sumber-sumber bumi yang akan habis seperti
minyak dan gas) dimana Malaysia terpaksa bergantung pada negara lain
yang akibatnya menjadikan Malaysia sentiasa menjadi pengikut (follower)
kepada kuasa-kuasa besar dan bukan pendahulu (leader) lalu terdedah
kepada ancaman-ancaman politik, ekonomi dan sosial
But, what is innovation and how it relates to the sustainability of our economy,
society and country? Innovation from my own point of view is an act of
modifying existing technologies so as to add its values both economically and
socially for the purpose of self-enhancement and commercialization. Creating
a new technology is not necessarily an innovation as creation would be a
better name for it. Creating a new feature or function of an existing
technology, on the other hand, would come back to the aforementioned act of
modification.

How innovation can sustain the survival of our society and country? The
answer is, by being renewable in nature. Innovations come from ideas which
in turn, come from the brain of an individual within a society. So, as long as
we can ensure the rebirth of our society, innovation is always a possibility.
This is how renewable an innovation can be and compare this with the
diminishing state of the oil. Also it is renewable in the sense that as
compared to other revenue generating activities, Innovation demands less
material capital but more of human capital. This is what I meant when I
wrote the post All We Need Are Books and Brain to Conquer the World on
September 16
th
. But having said these, it comes also with one condition,
hence the word possibility at the end of the of the sentence above.

Innovation, and sustainability for that matter will always remain a possibility
unless we can breed our next and next and next generations to possess
proper brain; smart enough, strong enough to have ideas than can lead to
innovations. In other words, we need a clever and smart society to innovate.
Do we really believe that we are the only one who has realized the importance
of innovations? Come on, even the words come from somebody else.

Believing that anybody can innovate for me is immature, not wrong but
immature. Immature in the sense that although it can happen sometimes and
somewhere, the element of lucks always there to govern, so its more like a
gambling. This trial and error version of innovative works where innovators
simply try things without having any reason behind it and principles that
guide it, only consumes so much; money, time and energy with low rate of
success. And in the time when the world is exponentially changing, the only
option that we have is to be quick but correct hence the word effective.

Please, I am not being pessimistic on this issue, in fact I am full of confidence
that Innovation is what we need, Innovation what we can do, and Innovation
what we must do; the only way forward. If I am not confident, I would not even
border to write this article. If I dont believe that our society can change and
improve, I would not even border to write anything in this blog, I might rather
sit in front of the television wearing my pelikat and just enjoy my life. But
what I am saying is, if we want to do it, lets do it properly as there are best
practices or proven methods that we can follow. Other words, there are
sustainable procedures in doing innovations. Its funny this thing called
sustainability; you sustain only if you can sustain.

I strongly believe, if we want to innovate, we must first understand in great
depth the basic and fundamental principles which lie behind and that make up
the technology we are about to innovate. Because only then we know what
and how parameters to be adjusted?, what and how initial and boundary
conditions to be modified?; what and how variables to be included? what and
how equations to be solved? and among these which conserves and which
optimizes the most? etc. The last two may be the most important; not
ensuring the conservation of laws usually what leads to physical failure of the
innovation and fail to optimize what makes an innovative work a waste.

I know this statement is going to be a controversial one because those trial
and error innovators who I have mentioned above would also like to claim
that this has always been the case for them. This very dilemma is what I
referred to when I wrote in a post on 14
th
of March 2009:

We can not even agree on what do we really mean by a conqueror (or to
conquer for that matter)? Does our ability in applying the knowledge qualify us
as the conqueror? Or is it the ability to understand the knowledge from the
axiomatic and the hypothesis point of views, followed by the theoretical and
the theorem levels and end up with all the innovations and the inventions what
really classifies the status of a conqueror?

All I am saying is, the problem with our present society is that we can not
even get to agree at the axiomatic level on what are we? what are our
strength and weakness? etc. And my claim on were not there yet on this
smart issue contained in the following writing of mine taken from the post All
We Need Are Books and Brain to Conquer the World on September 16
th
:

But the realities are seeing, for examples, only two Muslims ever won the
Nobles Prizes as compared to the 12 Chinese and Singapore universities at
top 20 in the world in comparison with ours at top 200. I know people will
argue about this ranking thing which for me just an immediate instance of how
our people are so self-obsessed, cannot accept self-criticism and always like
to blame others for their own lacking. Yesterday, after giving a business pitch
at PECIPTA 2011 at KLCC Convention Centre, I went up to Kinokuniya and
felt very sad to see out of hundreds (if not thousands) books at the Science,
Engineering and Mathematics sections, it was hard to even get ten books
authored by Muslims. If we really want Syiar Islam to be practiced throughout
the world, we must start working in turning this Kinokuniya scenario into
those where it would be our books on those shelves.

So all we need is a cultural revolution and by this time my critics will say hah,
another big words from him and typical him, idealistic and impractical. I
know all these will be thrown at me. But I am a man who do not believe in
cutting corners or short-cut. We can excel but work-hard, persevere, big-
hearted, brave we must be. This is what I learned so far in this life; especially
from my experience in IC London and in developing my group of students who
produced ERCAD software. So real these experiences I can never turned
back. On the question what do I mean by cultural revolution, I would say lets
start with the revolution of Budaya Ilmu and on what I really mean by this,
those really and sincerely want to know my views on this, please read my
posts in 2009 as there were all extractions from a bigger volume of my writing
on Budaya Ilmu (huh! it has been three years since I wrote those, how time
flies!).

Finally, let me conclude this article with my opinion that the measure of
smartness of a society is represented by the rate of coming to an agreement
on one particular issue; the smarter they are, the quicker they agree and vice
versa. In turn, to innovate we must be smart and this only requires us to be
quick to agree and most importantly quick to UNITE!.