BioBusiness Revolution - Helathcare and Biomedical Sciences (Past Present and Future)

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in”.

This Greek proverb tells us that people have to constantly think and innovate for future generations and not just think about our present situation in order to succeed as a society. As with the biobusiness industry, specifically the medical and healthcare industry, we have to constantly come up with methods of preventing diseases instead or solely focusing on finding cures in order to prevent future generations from contracting them.

Now for some numbers. The BioBusiness industry accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s GDP and employs about 40% of the world’s labour force. This shows that a lot of focus and emphasis is placed on the BioBusiness industry and this includes the biomedical, agri-veterinary, environmental and industrial industries. This lesson focused on the biomedical and healthcare industry, which is unsurprising as it makes up the majority of the BioBusiness industry. However, an interesting statistic to note is that the USA spends a higher proportion on healthcare compared to agriculture or the food sector, while the Asian countries spend a relatively lower proportion on healthcare, whereby agriculture makes up the majority.

We also looked at the trends of the global leading cause of death. In the past (around 1990), lower respiratory infections was the leading cause of death. Presently, heart diseases are now leading, with the percentage of deaths caused by respiratory infections falling. This is a sign that the biomedical industry has successfully discovered sufficient cures and preventions over the past decade. The increase in cases of heart diseases is also reflective that people are beginning to become more obese and not watching their diets. There is a very simple prevention for this which is self control, but the convenience and availability of junk foods are slowly turning societies into fast food nations. Another interesting point to note is that deaths caused by road traffic accidents and war have been on the rise in the past decade. These are hardly causes that can be prevented by the bio business industry so it’s also a sign that either the biomedical industry has been successful in coming up with cures for other diseases, or that there have been more wars and drivers have become more reckless in the past decade.

The issue of immortality was again brought up in one of the individual presentations. The question of whether should ‘eternal youth’ be available to a small proportion of society, if we would want to have it. Personally, I feel that I would like to live longer, but not forever. There’s only so much we can do in life, and once we have done everything on our bucket list, it would be pretty pointless to go on living with no purpose. Someone suggested that we could redo everything, but I feel I would get bored quite quickly.

Gene testing was also brought up. It is the process whereby we would be able to predict the exact probability of contracting some form of disease, or our exact time of death. I don’t think I would want to know when exactly I would die, as the stress I would have is likely to make me die earlier than expected. However on the other hand, it may give me an opportunity to plan what I want to do. Say for example, if I knew I was going to die in exactly 2 weeks time, I would be able to plan the things I want to do before I died. I would be able to die happy and without any regrets. So this thing about gene testing has both it’s pros and cons, and if it were to become a reality, I feel people should have the choice to choose whether they want to be aware of the results.

Overall, this was a pretty interesting lesson and I would rate it a 7/10.

ICT and World Change

Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Love it or hate it, we make use of ICT everyday in our lives. Recently on a trip to Malaysia, I observed that the first thing everyone did when they reached Singapore customs was not to check their passports or other important documents, but to check their phones for their emails or Facebook updates. It would be an exaggeration to say that we cannot live without ICT, but things will definitely move along very much slower without it. To borrow a quote from last weeks lesson, “Man's mind, once stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.” Oliver Wendell Holmes. This is also applicable to ICT, whereby once we are introduced to a new technology, such as wireless connections or 3G mobile, we find it hard to do without them.

We viewed a video regarding the ‘Project Natal’ about how technology has allowed us to interact with a virtual character, called Milo, which was reactive and was able to respond according to what the user did. It was supposedly unscripted and realistic that the person in the video behaved as though she was interacting with a real person. Although I thought the idea was interesting, it failed to convince me that the video was totally unscripted and that the character was truly able to react to every different situation. Nevertheless, it is an interesting insight to what could happen in the future of artificial intelligence.

We also discussed the different areas of ICT, such as passive vs interacting mass media, whereby we used to be able to only get information from sources such as newspapers and not be able to voice our opinions to the public. Also, the evolution of the internet (from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0) is pretty interesting as sites such as Google and Amazon are now able to predict what users want, based on previous searches on purchases. This gives us a greater variety of choices, as we may see something we did not know about and actually end up buying stuff we do not really need, or end up researching or reading up on another topic whereby the subject is miles away from the initial intended topic. Cloud computing was also brought up and the question of whether cloud computing would totally eliminate the need for personal storage equipment, such as hard disks. I feel that we still need our own personal privacy and uploading and storing our stuff on a common server would eliminate privacy completely. Hence I feel that cloud computing would slowly become more pervasive, but would not completely overtake.

This would be due to the risks and dangers with ICT, which was discussed in the last part of the lesson. We are beginning to lose our privacy on the online world, whereby everything we do online, be it a blog post or twitter update can be seen by every one around the world. Also, we are exposed to other harmful information or corrupting influences online, such as pornography or sexual predators and there’s little we can do about it but to educate the people. The risk of impersonation online is also higher, as it is difficult to certify who we are communicating with online is really who he claims to be. This exposes us to being more easily cheated and such cases are becoming more and more prevalent in our society.

I would rate this lesson an 8/10 as the topics that were discussed got me interested and I ended up spending some time researching on some of the topics, such as the ‘Project Natal’ and the future of artificial intelligence. I’m looking forward to the next session on the BioBusiness Revolution!

Individual Report Brief Outline

Changes in sports broadcasting

Before the advent of ICT and the mass media, people used to travel great distances just to catch their favourite sports teams in action. These days, millions of people around the world can tune in at the same time to watch a sporting event, such as the Olympics or a Barclays Premier League match. As a result, sports have become huge businesses, contributing immensely to the economy. Over the years, with greater improvements in technology, such sporting events can be broadcasted to almost everyone in the world. It is interesting to see how sports broadcasting has developed over the years, from tuning in to the radio to catch the live commentary of a sporting event, to 3D screenings of such events.

Executive Summary

Here I’ll be focusing on how ICT and broadcasting has made sports a multi-million dollar business.

Background

I’ll be looking into the history of how people used to turn in or catch the latest updates of sporting events and how it has improved drastically to recent times.

Past

From travelling great distances to catch their sporting heroes live, to tuning in to other means of broadcast just to get the latest updates on certain events. Sports were never as huge as it is today.

Present

Live broadcasts in high definition, various camera angles to capture every single piece of action during the event to 3D broadcasts, sports broadcasting have improved drastically over the years.

Future

Technologies to allow viewers to feel as though they are watching live at a certain stadium, even more cameras (such as player POV cameras) to capture the action on the field.

Drivers of World Change, Change Management and Change Leadership

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

This quote by George Bernard Shaw is true in the sense that the leaders of change are usually the ones who try to change the mindsets of the people to think like them. Those who adapt themselves to the world offer little to change and progress and may even cause stagnation.

We began session 4 with the drivers of world change, namely environmental, scientific discovery and globalization. Without these factors, humans may not be as motivated to develop quickly. Take the article on the Zambian construction industry for example, whereby the Zambians have been happily managing the industry using their own traditional methods. Without globalization and the influx of foreign investors, the Zambians would not have been motivated to adapt to changes, such as improvements in communications technology, and the Zambian construction industry would have stagnated, with the people satisfied with how things were going along.

We also talked about the types of changes - evolutionary and revolutionary. Evolutionary change is basically a gradual change or improvement, where for example a horsecart is gradually improved until it becomes the fastest around. A revolutionary change on the other hand goes through a huge leap in improvement, for example the car being invented at the time the fastest horsecart is made. The invention of the car totally eclipses the horsecart, and phases it out immediately. Most businesses these days are hoping to create revolutionary changes in their respective industries.

The 4 readings for this week were pretty interesting, with 2 forecasting the possible futures in various categories. What caught my attention was the prediction that the number of terrorists would decrease due to the increase of job availability in the Middle East. However, their impact would be greater, due to the improvements in science and technology, giving the terrorists the technology to create a much larger impact on the communities. As today is the 10th anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks, we are able to see and remember the impacts and changes a single act of terrorism can affect the world. Airport security is now heightened to levels that are many times higher than 10 years before. However, I do not agree that terrorism would decrease simply due to the increase in the number of jobs in the Middle East. First of all terrorism not only occur in the Middle East, but parts of Europe and Asia as well. Therefore, it is pretty frightening to imagine what terrorists can do in 15 years time, especially with the improvements in scientific technology. It is important that terrorist groups do not get their hands on such technologies, otherwise the impacts will be devastating.

The second half of the lesson was on change management and change leadership. Leaders are the ones who identify the problems that we face, and they are the ones who come up with the solutions to these problems. Managers are the ones who enforce these solutions, making sure that things work out perfectly. In some cases, some leaders can also manage well. An example would probably be Steve Jobs, who is involved at almost every level in the company.

http://www.metronetiq.com/archives/7_regional_collaboration/d_champions_change_agents/

This image would sum up the characteristics of a leader of change, with those of the leaders on the right, and that of the followers on the left.

I would rate this lesson a 9/10 as I've learnt how to view change from different perspectives. It is also important to constantly change ourselves, not only to adapt to other people, but also to adapt people to us.

Technology, Industrial Development and Innovation Management

We started out this week’s session with a video entitled “The story of stuff” which talks about the general process of how resources are extracted and processed in factories, to the distribution of goods followed by the consumption and finally the disposal. The narrator of the video spent ten years studying the process and what actually goes on in between. She also talks about how big corporations are affecting the amount of resources on earth. It was mentioned that the U.S. , which comprises only 5% of the world’s population, is using up 30% of the earth’s resources and producing 30% of the earth’s waste. If everyone consumed at U.S. rates, we would need 3-5 more planet earths. This was an interesting video describing how limited the resources on our earth is. Unfortunately we were not able to watch the entire video as it was too long. I will definitely be checking out the rest of the video when I get the time to.

This got us discussing the sustainability of the resources we currently use. The natural resources which we currently employ, such as oil and trees for paper, are decreasing at significant rates and are in danger of being depleted completely. These days, we are looking to different forms of energy to support the people’s needs as well as to control the rate of consumption of these limited resources. It is predicted that in Dubai, oil would run out by or before 2015, in 4 years time! Hence it is important to look towards other sources of energy, such as solar energy or palm oil. Green technology is also very much encouraged these days and companies are being rewarded or offered subsidies for coming up with green products. A good example would be hybrid electric vehicles, which are partly electric or hydrogen-powered. This greatly reduces the reliance on fossil fuels and hence controls the rate of consumption. However, as some classmates pointed out, the refueling stations are limited and are not easily accessible, making it a deterrence for potential buyers. Also, the short lives and costs of these vehicles outweigh the energy savings made by these vehicles, which is why corporations are still unwilling to invest heavily in green technology. However, I feel that in a few years time, as technology continues to develop, this will no longer be a factor for producers and we will soon be able to see more and more green vehicles on our roads.

The second half of the lesson was on technology and innovation management. Prof showed us the Shahi Landscape Model for Technology and the R-D-A (Research -> Development -> Application) Translation Process. The landscape model is pretty interesting and I feel that there is too little focus on “Cloud” opportunities as the risk is high and the chances of failure is too unpredictable. However, those in this category stand to gain the most should they be successful. I feel that a very good example would be Apple, as they were willing to venture into untested markets with products such as the Ipod and Ipad. For the R-D-A translation process, we were introduced to Prof Arai’s perspective of the pipeline, who says that research is the dream, application is the reality and development, well, is the nightmare, which I thought was pretty interesting.

I would rate this lesson a 7.5/10, as the content was still interesting, but some of the class (me included) did not come well prepared for the lesson and could not bring up points for discussion for some of the readings. I will definitely prepare myself better for the following lessons in future and hopefully we can have more fruitful TWC sessions ahead.