Week 13 - Reflections

Week 13 - Reflections

The journey for the class of Technology and World change has come to an end but technology and change will go on. The course has laid the foundation for us to comprehend these disruptive changes in the world. Through the course, we learnt what determines a disruptive change, the drivers for disruptive change, change management followed by in detail for a few scopes such as ICT, biotechnology and energy. Finally, it ended off with the framework to understand and forecast disruptive changes.

The journey was certainly an enjoyable and informative one, especially given the small size of the class, the class felt more closely knitted. I enjoyed the large amount of time dedicated for discussion where students are given the opportunity to speak and discuss, allowing more in-depth discussion and understanding of the topic. One of the few key takeaways is the many models demonstrated, such as the cloud, summit and valley model, the roadmap model, etc. They prove to be useful to understand not just technology and world change but basically everything in the world. Although the lessons did not go in depth into such models which are beyond the scope of the course, it opened the door to understanding such models and its applications. I believe they will be helpful in future when I get the opportunity to apply them.

The course also discussed the knowledge based economy. We all know Singapore is moving toward knowledge based economy but what I learnt from this course is the problems we are facing moving towards knowledge based economy. The problems include radical structural change to treat each employee as an asset rather than an expense. The companies have to move away from structure from manufacturing phase to develop a new structure which encourages knowledge tapping. It is a challenge because knowledge is intangible, thus hard to quantify or “store”. Through this, I had a greater knowledge of the need for Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) through the extra readings provided by professor. As we enter the workforce in a couple of years, I believe such information will come in handy as not only we need to contribute to the knowledge growth of the company, we might have the opportunity to help shape the new structure for knowledge based economy.

Lastly, Professor Gurinder went in-depth into each topic of emerging fields which includes ICT, Biotechnology, renewable energy and other emerging technologies. It brought us fresh insights that we will probably never read up on if not for the course. Additionally, the Facebook group created also allowed plenty of interesting videos and articles to be shared among all student studying TWC. It was certainly an enriching experience.

Overall, I will rate the course 9/10. The course was interesting and gave me fresh insight of the subject. However, it could have been better if some of the sessions were spent on applying all these information rather than just discussing on the surface. The class could possibly spend a few sessions on scenario planning where we can investigate in depth how such technologies would and changes affect us. Given a scenario, we can discuss on how changes will affect the scenarios and the decisions we might undertake and in the process, we will have more perspective from different people and possibly even cover some mistakes that corporates have done and learn from them. Such exercises will bring about more in-depth discussion as it is more focused and interesting rather than discussing what is the pros and cons of certain technology which usually end up scratching only the surface of the topic. 

Here marks the end of the course Technology and World Change. It is a course that I will recommend because it certainly is very helpful and forces us to observe very important happenings that we take for granted. This will be the last entry that is graded by Professor Gurinder but perhaps when I am free and chance upon interesting thoughts, I might post it here still. Stay posted.

Week 12 - Group presentation

Week 12 – Group presentation 1

“Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.” - Martin H Fischer

Today’s session was 3 group presentations. Through this post, I will share some experience of creating a website without prior experience and some views I have.

The session started with the quote by Martin Fischer, a quote that resonates strongly with my experience of doing the website. True enough, the creating a good website is no simple feat. The project started off with identifying the topic area, doing the necessary research, compiling and analysis the research and finally, the start of the website. The initial stage of the project faces the typical challenges of writing a report which was easier to overcome. However, after compilation of the research, we faced great difficulty presenting in the website. The large chunk of information now has to be dissected into bite size yet without compromising the quality of the information. That was truly a challenge. As the quote goes, within simplification lies wisdom.

Eventually we managed to dissect the information and presented it in the best possible manner we could. Through this project, I managed to experience structuring a presentation from scratch and attempting to present in the best possible format. It has to be both visually pleasing and informative. It helped me understand truly the difficulties of product innovation. It is not just coming up with the best technology or best design but the ability to integrate the best technology into the best design for a good user experience. I am now able to better appreciate the hard work involved to create good products such as iPhone, etc.

 Through this project, I had also learnt some knowledge on social media. In particular, I have much better idea of how social media has an impact on human behaviors. One of the most interesting findings was while humans love social media and use it extensively; it is not able to replace face to face meetings. This de bunks the usual myth of social media will eventually cause us to lose the physical interaction.

The reason why social media was so successful was because it is convenient, easy to access and time-saving. We can be constantly on Facebook, Twitter, etc. to stay connected with friends but the quality of this interaction is not satisfactory for most people.

This is why social media will only a supplement to how we conduct our lives. In fact, social media will bring us closer than never before rather than cause us to lose the physical interaction because we don't lose sight of people around us anymore. No matter how busy or distant, it is still possible to spend few minutes to catch up which impossible to previously.

At the same time, face to face interaction cannot be replaced for we still need to feel a physical presence to connect at a deeper level. President Obama understood this theory well. Despite having billions of citizens, his social media involvement did not stop at mere conversation or tweets online. He took it further to invite ordinary citizens for a dinner with him to empathize with them. It still takes a physical presence to show that you care.

This project has given me the opportunity to understand the difficulties of simplification and new insights to social media, things I will not have appreciated or realized if not for this project. However, the journey was certainly a tough one. No pain, no gain.