Session 10 – Technology Assessment and Forecasting

Drivers for Technology Assessment and Forecasting

How do you differentiate between them and their potential impact?

Every dollar spent on research on environment is a dollar wasted? The realisation now that you can’t escape green technology – Singapore is finally beginning to start research on environmental issues again.

Where should you put your resources? The focus has always been on the biomedical sciences, but Prof said better to put resources on environmental technology.

The further you look, the greater amount the uncertainty.

Commonly used foresight methodologies:

Backcasting – look to future then cast backwards

Delphi – Consulting leading experts on different issues, e.g. on Aids. Take 2 extreme values, then take average.

I presented on technology trends affecting businesses. There are three major trends:

Number one, the prevalence of mobile phones and devices. Smartphones and tablets are fast becoming our primary computers, and therefore websites need to be maximised for mobile devices.

Number 2 the app revolution. There is an endless number of applications that can be created quickly and cheaply, such as sales apps, logistics apps, purchasing apps and supply chain management apps. These apps give companies new capabilities to reach employees, business partners and consumers.

Number 3, cloud computing and virtualisation. Businesses are virtualising their desktops, servers and storage systems. Data is now stored on remote servers and are accessed wirelessly. The cloud can be a multimedia data centre which is certain to grow, and can be expected to have more in it next year than this year.

Staying on top of these 3 trends will allow a business to innovate faster and be more agile. The author also states that things are going to shift much faster within the next five years than they did in the past five.

Branding is a very important part of setting up a business. It is the name, term, sign, symbol or design or a combination of ALLLL of them used to identify the goods and services of a seller and to DIFFERENTIATE them from other sellers. It is like having Kids Central, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, Okto Channel, Cartoon Network all jammed up in your tv screen. And within Disney Channel, we have Miley Cyrus and her Hannah Montana, Selena Gomez and her Wizards of Waverly Place, the Jonas Brothers, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, High school musical and Zac Efron…To rise above all the other brands, the author suggested that companies need to touch both the left brain and right brain of the consumers. Left brain being the consumer’s rational, money saving and value added side, and the right brain being the emotional side, the side that causes you to ignore how much something costs and buy it anyway.

The author draws examples to Apple. Now Apple doesn’t compete on price. They compete on design, user experience, technology, loyalty and other areas which keep them from having to compete on price.

So to rise above all the other brands, the author suggested that companies need to touch both the left brain and right brain of the consumers.

Left brain being the consumer’s rational, money saving and value added side, and the right brain being the emotional side, the side that causes you to ignore how much something costs and buy it anyway.

The author draws examples to Apple. Now Apple doesn’t compete on price. They compete on design, user experience, technology, loyalty and other areas which keep them from having to compete on price. We are in the process of constantly changing how we buy, sell, market, communicate, collaborate, innovate, train and educate. Therefore, one should always ask: How can I become more relevant in a world of transformational change? In addition, making use of social media and viral marketing are very crucial. The keyword here is not media, but social. When you market your product, grab your consumer’s attention so that they’ll want to share it with other people.

This last conclusive lesson has been very interesting. In the past 10 weeks of TWC, I’ve learned at least 3 years worth of GP stuff. I’m really glad Prof doesn’t follow a cookbook learning style with a textbook, because just by learning what I learn, I constantly have this nigging feeling that my information is slowly becoming outdated. I would give this lesson a perfect 10 out of 10! 🙂

Session 9 – Emerging and Future technology

This lesson was an interesting one, a perfect penultimate ending to our technology and world change module. I’ve learned so much, and the way how people keep coming up with new inventions constantly amazes me. If you restrict yourself to everything you know, you’ll forever stay in the same circle. Whereas if you let imagination take over, endless possibilities could happen, which is a rising star mentality.

Some interesting emerging inventions showed in the class videos were about:

Electronic plastic – Flexible plastic displays – food packaging, medicine, on clothes, or even contact lenses!

Newspaper – all on a single sheet – can save the environment!

My key takeaways from the lesson are:

1) Supply can sometimes create demand -> You don’t realise what you need until you’ve experience it! I believe this is an important theory in creating new future technology. Do we honestly need an iPhone? Do we really need text messages for that matter? The people  in the 40s-50s probably didn’t rely on text messaging as much as we did, but now it’s a vital part of our life. To me, we have already gone past the brim of creating what we need, most of the inventions now are based on what we want, and simply making our lives either more complicated or making us lazier. To come up with new technology that will be well-received, we ought to create new wants and not focus on what we currently lack or need.

2) Market-driven opportunities

3) Mass media and advertising  – shaping the consumer’s perceptions

4) Creative Technology Company -> Very innovation-drived, but had poor marketing strategies. Marketing builds desire, and requires adequate amount of investment too! Is this characteristic of Spore companies or linked to Spore’s education? Marketing strategies are important because they influence the way how people think of your products.

5) Japanese using robotics to boost economy and labour force instead of bringing in foreigners who don’t understand the Japanese culture. I have never really went to think about why the Japanese excel in creating robots, until Prof mentioned this in class. The Japanese culture is a unique one, and is rather hard to fit in if you come from somewhere like America.

Drawing parallels from this to Singapore, I doubt Singapore will ever stop the influx of foreigners coming in because Singapore’s culture is basically a “chapalang” one, there is no distinct and unique factor that sets us apart. For one, we don’t speak a single language. Most of us speak English, but relate better to Singlish, which is a mix of dialects and different languages. Therefore the market for robotics to combat foreigners in Singapore remains small.

6) How leaders are distinguished from followers. Again, this is a very repeated concept from the start of the module till now. We are constantly drilled to think that we ought to be leaders, but sometimes the education system in Singapore favours the formation the followers rather than leaders, in which we are taught that conformity is best and we are exposed to cook-book learning – there is always a model answer for everything, even compositions where students are supposed to be able to use their creativity. In university however, I appreciate how courses here, especially in my course Business,  is unlike what I’ve done for the past 12 years, and I have no model answer to refer to.

There were 5 presentations:

1) Nanotechnology -> Would you willingly undergo surgery to enhance yourself beyond the limits of being “human”? What about brain implants? Using technology to enhance humans. Eg. Lasik for athletes to see beyond 15m. When do you stop being human? I think that this question is very interesting indeed, but I feel that as technology advances, the moral and ethical standards of human beings fail to advance too. We seem to always achieve new goals like creating holograms which can talk etc, but our understanding of life as it is is stagnant. As the grey area between robots and humans get bigger, I feel that there is a need to clarify this matter. Also, what do these enhancement surgeries have in difference with eating supplement pills for that matter? One could argue that the latter is temporary, but they are both used for the same purposes!

2) Surface computing -> Microsoft Surface

3) Future of airplanes

4) Robotic Technology

5) Augmented Reality -> Gaming