Of banana leaves, German handbags and idling van drivers
In more affluent parts of the world, the guarantee of profit attracts a wealth of inventions that tackle needs of all size and choice. As technology disruption persists and evolves at an intense pace, the market demand for new inventions only continues to rise as the economic and business value of patents is appreciated.
Of handbags
This however hasn’t happened that well in the rest of the world and Dr. Chandra Embuldeniya, Former Vice Chancellor at Uva Wellassa University on a breezy morning at his Polhengoda home sits with the Business Times to discuss on how Sri Lanka can perhaps make a dash to bridge this gap. Fresh after a 3-day forum on Science and Technology early this month, Dr. Embuldeniya with raised eyebrows questions me on why an investor should come to Sri Lanka, and before I could blurt out the usual suspect of reasons, he points at my handbag and one by one goes through its exterior embellishments. “This bag is about locating the right fabric, the right leather cuts, the right loops and the right sewing machine.
And before this process happened, somebody somewhere invented all these.” I probably looked blank because Dr. Embuldeniya wanted to know where I got it from. When I mention a foreign country, he bangs his left hand on the table and says, “Exactly.” Just when I am worried it may have hurt him, his second granddaughter walks upto him to show a small cut on her second finger. “I need to run a small hospital at times,” he’s apologetic while administering the meds and plastering her finger. Once the little honey is properly bandaged, he turns to me to say that I procure or prefer my essentials such as handbags from abroad because Sri Lanka doesn’t produce quality stuff, which is because we don’t have that ‘technology’.
Other countries (Thailand, Malaysia, Korea etc) are armed with technology, he says and they now are ‘suppliers to the world’. “In this type of situation we will continue to become poor,” Dr. Embuldeniya says. He reiterates that not only should we strive towards innovation, but we should also be high on patents. Patents are today’s strategic business assets—they can mitigate risk and create competitive advantage for you and your competitors, he says. This disconcerting reality is mainly due to major hurdles that prevent developing countries from experiencing the full transformational efficiency of profit-driven markets centered on invention. So, how do we raise the current percentage of market share?
Dr. Embuldeniya reiterates that we as a nation should break away from this ‘silo-driven system’ to something more interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary. In a bid to illustrate this, he goes back to my bag. “This bag has metal hooks that are flexible (bent into shape) and they should be gold plateble – so a process for plating has to be found. So you see this bag has chemistry, physics, engineering, metalogy, design and aesthetics in it. Aesthetics will determine what attracts this bag to the customer. Finally there’s entrepreneurship and marketing,” Dr. Embuldeniya spells out an exhaustive list adding that what was discussed at the forum showed how badly disconnected we are as a nation in these respects.
Idle vans
Pointing out that 1.4 million 3-wheeler drivers and school transport van drivers are idling, he says this is ‘capital’ in many forms going down the drain. Of these two, he says that there is a huge ‘capital’ stuck in school vans idling from 7.30 am (when the children are dropped) till 2.30 pm. “There is the human capital and time and the van. And we sorely need to improve public transportation where people can get into productive business.” Under this usual profit-driven model, technology is invented, businesses form to commercialise it and entire industries emerge to drive market adoption, he says. “We’ve seen this play out with cell phones, microprocessors, social media, and countless other examples. Sadly these same competitive market forces that have been so capable in creating invention economies are weakest in areas where they’re needed most.
” The spirit of invention—a focus on what could be rather than what is -, is what this country needs, he says. “Business of invention and a driving force in the creation of a market that recognises the value of ideas and what we are trying to do is promote that culture. But we wouldn’t be true to this spirit if we stopped there and didn’t keep one looking toward the future,” Dr. Embuldeniya says adding that the resourceful forum had spelt many areas in this respect. The recommendation was a Colombo declaration that had 10 wide spanning areas. This also spelt out how to connect sustainable development goals with science and technology. Children are growing up in a world where social media, mobile technology and online communities are fundamental to the way that they communicate,
learn and develop, he says adding that in recent years the speed, flexibility and affordability of rapidly evolving digital technology has helped slowly pry shut the digital divide between the haves and have-nots. But this isn’t enough, Dr. Embuldeniya says. “It’s important to believe that ideas are valuable. We ought to ensure a market for invention thrives. It’s also important to not be shy about taking risks,” he says pausing to ask me whether I am aware that fine thread can be made from banana trunks. The answer was easy and he goes on to explain that this is already done in India. Similarly, this is done with pineapple. ”We ought to tackle invention head on, and we have the acumen to pull it off. What we need is a cross-disciplinary approach. And above all else, we need a passion for invention that drives us forward.”