In years gone by, abundant natural resources determined a countr y's wealth. Today's trump cards to progress and industrial growth in a knowledge-driven world are science, technology and innovation .
Without these new skills, knowledge and a penchant for innovation, a country's economy would plunge into decline or, at best, stagnate.
With that in mind, on March 31, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak launched the RM100 million Business Start-up Fund of the Malaysian Technology Development Cor poration. The fund will help start technology-based companies th at have highly innovative products and the potential to compete in the open global market.
The need to compete technologically is also addressed in Malaysia's New Economic Model, launched in 2009 to help in the nation's transition from a middle-income to high-income member of the world community by 2020, a mere nine years aw ay.
Robert Solow, the 1987 Nobel Prize-winning American economist, demonstrated how increases in productivity were due to technological development. Indeed, his work revealed that well over half of thegrowth in output per hour in the United States during the first half of the 20th century could be attributed to advances in knowledge and technology.
Innovations such as the first automobile assembly line, first airplane, first transistor, integrated circuits, optical and satellite communication, Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Internet all helped make the US wealthy.
Solow demonstrated that, contrary to traditional economic thinking, the rate of technological progress is more important to growth than capital accumulation or increases in labou r.
From the 1960s on, his studies were influential in persuading governments to invest in technological research and development.
However, according to a report by the US National Academy of Sciences last year, America's “long-term competitiveness outlook”(read jobs) has deteriorated in the past five years.Amer ica's intelligentsia fear the rise of China, now the world's second biggest economy, due in part to several new statistics and insights: In 2009, 51 per cent of US patents were awarded to non-US companies.
China, meanwhile, has gone from 15th place to 5th in international pate n t s.
The World Economic Forum now ranks the US 48th in quality of Mathematics and Science education.
In less than 15 years, China has moved from 14th to second place (behind the US) in research articles published in academic journals.
Chin a 's Tsinghua and Peking Universities have the largest number of PhD graduates in the world.
Eight of the 10 global companies with the largest research and development budgets have established R&D facilities in China, India or both.
In a survey of global firms planning to build new R&D facilities, 77 per cent say they will build in China or India. An American company recently opened the world's largest private solar R&D facility in Xian, China.
China has broken ground on 30 nuclear reactors out of 50 worldwide.
China has just surpassed the US with the fastest super-computer in the world. China holds the record for the highest speed rail in the world (with 354kph operational speed). A total of 9,030km of new high-speed rail are now under construction. (Japan – 2,450km, France – 1,870km; US – 0).
China will achieve 18 per cent (and may reach 20 per cent) renewable energy by 2020, according to Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission.
Such developments happened not by chance but by a very conscious political leadership.
In a speech at the World Economic Forum in September 2009, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao stressed that “science and technology is a powerful engine of economic growth.
We will make China a country of innovation. We will accelerate the development of a low-carbon economy and green economy so as to gain an advantageous position in the international industrial competition”
Although time is running out, America has the opportunity to lead the world in a new industrial revolution.
Indeed, in January, President Barack Obama rallied his country to recognise a new “Sputnik mom en t”and to invest heavily inresearch, infrastructure and education.
Malaysians, meanwhile, should be proud to have earned for the first time a position among the 10 most competitive countries in the world, according to the Swiss-based Institute for Management Development.
Malaysia shares its top 10 ranking with Singapore, Hong Kong, the US, Switzerland, Australia, Sweden, Canada, Taiwan and Norway.
This ranking is clearly rooted in the innovative and bold package that the government has recently embarked upon with the 1Malaysia concept, the New Economic Model, the Government Transformation Programme and the Economic Transformation Prog ramme.
Underpinning the success of this long-term economic package is technology, recognised by the prime minister as “a key element to creating wealth for the nation.
If Malaysians fail to embrace and develop technology, the country's competitiveness will lessen significantly in a very competitive global environment ”
The writer is science adviser to the prime minister and holder of the Tuanku Chancellor Chair at Universiti Sains Malaysia
