Fourth industrial revolution and speed of innovation
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The Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) invited me to be the Chief Guest at the second session of their convocation last month and to deliver the convocation address. I accepted the invitation readily because I felt that it was an opportunity for me to share some ideas that may help shape the future of the new graduates. At the end of the convocation one of the Professors walked up to me and said “You told them the complete opposite of what they believe in”. That was because I told them that the greener pastures that they are looking for in the West will be right here in Asia in the future. I shared with them four ideas. Today I elaborate on them briefly in this column.
Fourth industrial revolution
Those who followed the discussions at the recently concluded World Economic Forum would be familiar with the term ‘fourth industrial revolution’ also called Industry 4.0. [https://www.weforum.org/gena/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-wha it-means-and-how-to-respond] The first industrial revolution can be traced back to the year 1784. That was characterised through the introduction of mechanisation with the recognition of the power of water and steam. 1784 was the year that William Murdoch, a Scottish inventor, built a prototype steam road locomotive. The second industrial revolution can be traced back to the year 1870. That was characterised by mass production and assembly lines which was made possible by the industrial application of electric power. 1870s was the time when the practical incandescent light bulb was invented leading to lighting becoming one of the first publicly available applications of electrical power.
The third industrial revolution used electronics and information technology to automate production. It can be traced to the 1960s when the first computers and networks were built. The fourth industrial revolution, the one we are living through now – the Digital Revolution, is characterised by the fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between physical, digital, and biological spheres. It is important for new graduates coming from the information technology background to recognise this. The merger of these technologies will require them to acquire new skills sets to be competitive in what they do in the future, they would have to break out of their information technology silo and seek new knowledge and skills in other fields of science. They will have to acquire these knowledge and skills on their own because no contemporary undergraduate curriculum anywhere in the world is equipping graduates to face this new challenge.
Disruptive technologies
Several years ago the Global Think Tank, McKensey Global Institute, identified 12 disruptive technologies or advances that would transform life, business and the global economy. [http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/business-technology/our-insights /disruptive-technologies]. The first seven among these were estimated to have an annual economic impact of over a trillion dollars by the year 2025. These were Mobile Internet, Automation of Knowledge Work, Internet of Things, Cloud, Advanced Robotics, Autonomous and Near Autonomous Vehicles, and Next Generation Genomics.
So, one would say that this is the best time to be an Information Technology (IT) graduate. We must however also understand that this also means that those who are training in other fields would also have to acquire more and more IT skills. Therefore the demand for training in IT would grow at rapid speed. We are already seeing that transition happening in the field of medicine.
Rapid speed of innovation
Fuelled by the digital revolution, the speed of innovation is becoming rapid. In the past innovation was confined to small groups of experts within a company who had access to large budgets producing a few innovative products. Today, innovation is happening in online platforms, by large groups of people working collaboratively – crowdsourcing. The cost of innovation is a fraction of the cost in the past, and it is rapid and more powerful. To understand this, although not the perfect example, take the example of the gramophone.
The gramophone, invented in 1877 for mechanical recording and reproduction of sound, and its various improved versions was the main medium for recording and reproducing music for over 100 years. I can remember the brand new record player that my father brought home in 1981. It was the envy of everyone. But since then we have gone from floppy disks to high density diskettes to CDs to DVD and to pen drives in rapid succession. Such innovation is happening all around us in every sphere of life, and we find it hard to keep pace with it. This creates the opportunity for a new breed of inventors and techno-entrepreneurs. One would say that the best time to take a risk or two in life is soon after graduation!
Change shift of the earths’ economic centre of gravity to the east In 2012 the McKinsey Global Institute analysed data from the late British economist, Angus Maddision, who specialised in quantitative macroeconomic history and constructed a map depicting the shift of the worlds’ economic centre of gravity from 1 AD to 2010 AD. The economic centre of gravity was calculated by weighing locations by GDP in three dimensions and projected to the nearest point on the earth’s surface. The centre of gravity remained over South Asia from 1 AD to 1820.
Thereafter it shifted to the North and West. In the 1960s it started turning back and by 2010 it was making its way back rapidly to the East. By the year 2025 it is projected to shift further east than the point over South Asia from where it began its westward journey 200 years ago. So the economic centre of the world, the greener pasture of the future, will be right here in Asia and what better place to live and work in Asia than in Sri Lanka? So I invited the young graduates to remain in this country and to contribute to its socio economic development.
(The writer is the President, Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka; the Past President, Sri Lanka Medical Association; the President-Elect, Commonwealth Medical Association; and a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka. He can be contacted via vajirahwd@hotmail.com).