Innovation - Our Way to the Future
The world has its rich history build upon evolution, which has been achieved through innovation. Innovation was made by successors who took the risk of bending the normalities of its industry to achieve a higher state of success. Nation’s grow through its innovative implementations and changes, raising the economy at a high rate within a short period of time. If innovation was the way for every developed country, it is indeed the only way for Sri Lanka.
USA, the largest economy in the world has been governing the global economy through their innovations for the past 100 years. To become the Leader, many tangible innovations were done by the USA. It is important for us to understand that “ideas” are not innovations, but only a step-in of the innovation process. According to Bloomberg statistics, 8 out of 10 businesses that entrepreneurs begin ends up in a failure within 18 months from starting.
Innovation can be applied at any stage of a company, a business, an economy of a country, etc. and innovation happens in an ‘S’ Curve because it happens in a pattern of a curve. The ‘S’ curve has both ups and downs, but eventually properly executed innovation process will stand and end up in a growth function.
Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore, governing for three decades, is widely recognised as the founding father of modern Singapore. He studied at the University of Cambridge and went on to make an innovation in his country that would make Singapore the banking hub of the world. When the British Army left Singapore, they lost main source of income of Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew looked into innovation, to create new markets. He identified that when all the other countries which had banking hubs for international business were asleep, the sun
Dr. Kapila Ranasinghe: One of the few scholars who has had the privilege of studying at Harvard University, Cambridge University and University of Colombo has also pursued Innovation and Strategy at the Harvard University, USA. He serves as a Consultant in Strategy and Innovation and CEO of PIBT, Chairman of Advance Technology Centre (ATC) and Quality Assurance Institute (QAI). was still up in Singapore. Then he innovated new Singapore banking, logistics and business process to make a World’s Banking Hub and hence a logistics hub.
As Sri Lankans, though innovation is in our genes, we lack to understand how, when and where innovation should be applied. Especially, our education sector where Master’s programmes should include innovation as a subject. It is true that we are developing, but is it the rate that we can do? Are we into strategic and innovative development priorities? We too can make the right innovations to develop rapidly as such countries like Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam did. As famous Sri Lankan writer Kumaratunga Munidasa once wrote, “A Nation which is not producing new things will end up in a dark Limbo.”
We cannot develop all the industries at once, we should identify what to stop and what to begin, and focus is essential. When Virgin Atlantic was in a severe competition with British Airways, Dr. Richard Branson decided to let go of his first company, Virgin Records for 1Bln dollars and invested to make innovations in how people travel. Such innovations are what we Sri Lankans should look into.
Agriculture heavily depends on availability of lands, hence an industry for survival, but we need to identify industrial sectors and use innovative strate- gies to improve them to global scale and standards. Education is certainly one of these sectors. The percentage of high school graduates enrolling for degree programmes in the USA is 94%, 72% in the UK and less than 15% in Sri Lanka. Our innovative solutions should look at the remaining 85% and how to develop them to fill the countries and world requirement in the next decade. As an example, we should know how many nurses, doctors, plantation workers, professionals for tourism, etc we need to have by the year 2020 to satisfy our economic goals.
Affordable, geographically reachable, flexible and relevant education is such ideas that can be put into the innovation process which can find solutions to reach world standards. This helps many ways for economic growth of a country such as, to place our human capital for better earning levels in the competitive world human resource market, the country’s billable rate for projects will be higher hence local companies could reach international markets easier.
We Sri Lankans need to find innovative development priorities because innovations only will bring our country to fast, cost effective and sustainable economic achievements. Further, we should understand that Information Technology (IT) is widely used in innovation processes as a supporting element.
University of Greenwich, one of the largest research Universities conducting research for many countries offer innovative programmes such as their Master’s Degrees. Their programmes are carefully designed to meet future world requirements which will be more independent, empow- ered and multidiscipline competent workforce.
As an affiliated institute of the University of Greenwich, the Pioneer Institute of Business and Management (PIBT) sees this future requirement of the world and is geared to introduce futuristic programmes for Sri Lankan students.
PIBT has planned to set up an Industry Guided Innovation Lab at Flower Road, Colombo 7 premises with the help of foreign universities. The lab is inspired by the Harvard Innovation Lab where entrepreneurs can start their businesses and grow up to meet international business opportunities. For the first time in Sri Lanka, this will be the place for senior managers of various industries to discuss industry problems with professionals in the world.
The MSc in Computer Systems & Network Engineering offered by PIBT is a unique multidisciplinary programme created to meet the new era of IT.
This unique programme can be complet- ed within 12 months and is targeted at high calibre individuals with the knack for innovation and after successful completion, the student will be open to high profile global job opportunities while being a world-class professional in both Software and Networking. Further information about the MSc can be obtained at www.pibtsl.com