TWC Session 2 (Week 2)

Figure 1. Angkor Wat, Khmer Empire was the most powerful empire in Southeast Asia
Taken on 31 Oct 2012

What is technology? It is knowing how to apply what we know to solve/improve problems/situations
What is innovation? A process which creativity (invention) that is being marketed, an invention is the subset of innovation. Those questions were raised and explanations simplified by Prof. Shahi, before ushering in the session proper. Technology from Greek techne, "art, skill, cunning of hand" and logia (Wikipedia, n.d.).

Brief Overview/Summary

First part of the session, we started off by watching the 1st video on the history of the world and realized the importance of history and this brings me to relate to one of the quotes which I live by, "Study people's success stories hard. Study their failures even harder." -Sylvester Stallone, indeed this is true if you do not want to commit the same mistakes which prevented people/companies/government to succeed or progress. I could also relate this to Reading 2 Innovation in the Reset World by Vijay Govindaran [Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/vijay-govindarajan-innovation-leadership-thought-leaders-reset.html] which is mainly about the importance of innovation, investing for the future if your company wants to succeed in the future, the author also introduced a concept of 3 boxes which a company must have in order to succeed in today's world and this will be discussed in the next part of my post.

Prof. also mentioned that after WWII, we are living in Pax-Americana where the American system are the main influence to the world and they are the current superpower and that China might soon replace them in the future. We also discussed who are the dominant players in the social and culture influence in Singapore and the class came to a conclusion that K-Pop is now the main social influence and Western (American) being the main cultural influence. USA still has economic dominance which is likely to be over-taken by China in the future, because they are currently holding the manufacturing and industrial dominance. 

The class was also introduced to the Prof. Shahi's Organizational Behavior Model which will be discussed later. Before the start of the first 2 presentation by Wei Yang and Vanessa, we learnt history of the rise of Great Britain from a very hilarious video.

Second part of the session, we learnt that development can be positive and also negative, eg. a chemical factory can produce products which benefits the world but the factory will also cause pollution to the environment. In addition, world change is a function of development and with development, life expectancy increases. 

From Reading 1 on the Human Development Index (HDI) which is based on the nation's Health, Education and Income, Prof. concluded that engineering is the most important aspect to anything else to ensure health of the people, because water must be treated, followed by education where we must invest in training teachers, then finding ways of sustaining food source and lastly creating jobs to increase income of population. And , before the session ends Wen Bin, Sylvester and Tian Bai presented, and I am really intrigued by Sylvester's presentation on Eugenics which I think we should have more discussion on.

Interesting Observations and Ideas

• The concept of having fulfill the 3 boxes which is mentioned in Reading 2 Innovation in the Reset World by Vijay Govindaran [Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/vijay-govindarajan-innovation-leadership-thought-leaders-reset.html], the author came out with the concept that for any company or organization to succeed in today's world, quoted from his article, they must implement their projects across 3 boxes,  Box 1 is for “managing the present,”  Box 2 is for “selectively forgetting the past," Box 3 is for “creating the future”. And after the much discussion,the class came up with conclusion that Box 2 and 3 must work hand in hand which means the organization must learn the lesson of the failures from the past and apply to the future.

• Another concept which I find true, is Prof. Shahi's Organizational Behavior Model, which consists of the Rising Star Mindset, Falling Star Mindset  and the Dominant Player. Examples of the Rising Star Mindset, Japan after Meiji Era around 1850s, they start to open up, sent everyone to major universities to learn as much as possible and from there we see the rise of Japan and their dominance in WWII, another example brought up was China during Deng Xiao Ping's leadership, he too opened up China to investment, visited countries to learn from them particularly Singapore where Deng had sent many to learn and described that "Singapore as a strict, well-managed country that China must learn from and excel" [Retrieved from http://seekingalpha.com/article/785611-why-chinese-officials-are-in-love-with-the-singapore-model] and hence after his leadership, we see the rapid rise in China's economy. Next, we look into an example of a Falling Star Mindset, for instance the Western countries which are closing the doors to investments and new ideas, are now the ones facing economic crisis, we know that for America and a few European countries their credit ratings dropped and the talk of replacing the greenback as a world's currency. This model and the examples lead me to relate to a quote which I also live by, "Education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to change the world" -Nelson Mandela. Indeed, in life we must have the attitude to learn as much as possible in order to improve and face new challenges.

Key Take Away Points

• The process or methods we can apply or follow to backward companies and make a difference to them and make them prosper

• The reasons why some organizations have more advantages over the rest

• In order for an organization to succeed and prosper continuously, we must learn lessons of the failures from the past and make sure we do not commit the same mistakes again in our future plans, and that we must be forward-thinking and have foresight, lastly we must always learn from other people by opening up or visiting their organization so that there will be ideas we can modify or totally creating new ideas to suit our own.

Issues for Further Discussion

I feel that we should have more discussion on the questions raised by our 5 presenters as some of their questions were thought provoking and interesting.

Personal Ratings for Session

I rate this session 10/10 as many of the concepts introduced are very logical and useful in my goal career and that I can apply them to it.