Session 6-19/9/2011

Not until I attended this session did I realize such an interesting fact that Bio-business is currently a money-printing industry, whose profit surprisingly makes up a quarter of GLOBAL GDP!!! Since there are quite a few sub-industries in Bio-business, such biomedical, environmental industries and so on, this session only covered the most influential one, namely biomedical. Biomedical, which constitutes most of the profit of the entire Bio-business industry, in turn has some sub-industries including healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, the latter of which reminds me some scandals in which some pharmaceutical companies either produced fake medicines and transferred them to third-world countries or launching delusional campaign promoting their products. 

Some graphs and tables were shown during the session and in one of them I found that the US alone in 2001 witnessed more than one-third of its GDP constituted by BIobusiness, which is around $3500. That gigantic amount is nearly 1.5 times larger than the entire GDP of Russia in 2010($2230 billion, CIA factbook). A half of that amount that (roughly $1500) came from the healthcare sector so it is quite clear now why the American are so healthy and “bulky”. But life is not a bed of roses. Prof said that most of the $1500 is profit gained from lifespan-extension treatment on the elder, who can no longer contribute to the economic development. Obviously, that is somehow a lousy investment, though the elder naturally need to be taken care of and respected for their past contribution to their countries, since they will pass away eventually in a short time, and the benefits gained from their extended years of life isn’t worth that huge amount of money. 

There was also a graph showing the percentage of people dying from chronic diseases such as cancer and from communicable diseases such as diarrhoea/cholera or malnutrition worldwide. Only 6% in Europe and Central Asia decease because of the latter while 72% in Africa are killed by such causes. There lies an unspoken and sad fact: inequality among humankind still exists. However, there are still hopes somewhere since Prof also noticed during the session that the healthcare revolution is developing, more effective and cheap medicines and vaccines are being designed and produced.

All of the presentations made by other students during this session were truly amazing. All of the topics raised were very engaging, such as whether people can become immortal or not if their genes to be modified, or the rise of MHealth. The latter is the best so far since it received more than twenty “10”.Standing applause for the presenter of this topic since both his speech and his slideshows were simply awesome. This guy must have spent a lot of time designing his slides as there were quite a few of animations and pictures in these slides. Regarding his content, MHealth nowadays is becoming very pervasive thanks to the rapid development of smartphones. Virtually, only with a smartphone, people now can meet their own favourite doctor anywhere and anytime (if the doctor himself or herself is free of course), which not only helps to save time and money of people but also promotes their privacy. 

Key takeaways:

1.Moral hazard: Simply speaking, moral hazard describing the tendency of people to act carelessly when they are not open to or actually themselves not aware of the risks around them. To illustrate, after obtaining a health insurance package, people are inclined to drive or work in a way that not as safe as it is when they are not under any kind of insurance scheme since they think that if anything happens to them, the insurance companies which they have contracted with will take care of them. This is without doubt a very dangerous habit since it could lead to serious injuries or even deaths, and it is very insensible to think that money has more values than one’s health. Hence, it is very necessary for insurees to act normally as if nothing has happened to them.

2.Immortality: Life is precious so everyone all wants to keep it as long as possible. But is it really a good idea to be able to live forever? Some say yes if touching on the surface of the issue since once lifespan of people becomes limitless, everyone will then have more time to try new things or continue enjoying the things that they have already been interested in. Moreover, people will no longer have to bear the pain of losing their relatives or friends and cremation service will meet its end. But when digging deeper into this issue, we may realize that things are more complicated than they seem to be. Why? Here is the answer. (Thanks Aishwaryal Singhal a lot for sharing the link).

Quite true isn’t? Moderation in every aspect of our life is the key opening the door to ultimate happiness.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Oscar Wilde

I would rate this session 9/10 because of the awesome presentations of the others. It could have been rated 10/10 if more discussion about the following issues took place:

1.      The sustainability of Bio-business, especially the Biomedical industry.

2.      Short-term and long-term solutions for eradicating famine, malnutrition and communicable diseases in Africa.

Session 5-12/9/2011

The session this week covered everything related to ICT, which stands for information and communications technology. This term, as was written in Wikipedia, “stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), intelligent building management systems and audio-visual systems in modern information technology. ICT consists of all technical means used to handle information and aid communication, including computer and network hardware, communication middleware as well as necessary software.”

As always, Prof played a video to warm up the lesson. Though I had heard of Kinect, a gaming technology that frees players from using or touching the console, before, this was the very first time I saw that technology to be adopted in reality.

                                

Chillingly amazing, isn’t it? The most radical fear of humankind – loneliness – is not going to bother us anymore in a very near future thanks to this awesome yet still under experimentation and development technology. Hiring a maid or a baby-sitter will be no longer necessary since children will be able to be taken care of and accompanied by “so-called” friends at their age. Elderly, especially those with Alzheimer, will also benefit from the project since not only will they have a confidant to talk to but they will also be freed from burdensome tasks such as taking the medicine at the right time. However, some impediments, as someone said during the discussion afterwards, may arise as well if this kind of technology is abused. For instance, if children spend too much time with the virtual world of Kinect, they may find it hard to engage in real-world activities and more dangerously, fail to differentiate Kinect from the real world. 

The session continued with Prof’s elaboration on ICT. He gave an insight into some areas such as mass media, wireless and several other forms of ICT. Among them rose cloud computing as the sun of present online system. Cloud computing, according to Prof and one presenter in the session, is a kind of technology that enables the user to obtain information, software and shared resources as well as store date online without knowing precisely the physical location. Mediafire, a website allowing the people to upload or store their data and files online without losing a penny, is a typical example. Thanks to this technology, an enormous amount of money which is supposed to be used to buy external storage devices such as USB or external hard drives; maintain or upgrade the computer system within companies and et cetera, are saved and hence helps to enhance the performance of businesses. 

The individual presentations were indeed quite engaging, the last of which I believe was the best I have ever heard since week 1. Shaak touched on free digital goods and mentioned a lot of interesting information, including “Freemium”. The term may sounds strange at first but basically, it is just a fancy name for the strategy of the software providers allowing consumers to use the trial version of their products to have a better idea of what the products are like before deciding whether they want to go on purchasing the full-version products. Frankly this is a very creative way to promote the products since it allows the consumers to meddle with real yet fully developed software or in other words, forms an interaction between the customers and the products. Still, the hackneyed problems that come along with this method of advertising is that consumers, who always want to obtain new things without putting their hands in the pocket, may be tempted to conduct piracy. My brother was once a target of this strategy when he played an online game for free at first but later became so into it that made him spend quite a sum of money to boost the level of his character in the game!

“Today’s real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless,

free and fettered, privileged and humiliated.”

- Kofi Annan, Former Secretary-General of the United Nations –

This saying is actually the most valuable gift I get from this session, however intriguing other previous information iare Kofi Annan once again reflected the deep-rooted fact that there will never be fairness in this world. The planet will always be divided into the advanced part the lagging-behind part, even though people are trying hard to bridging the gap between them the rest. Borders between nations after all are just imaginary lines and it cannot prevent people from interacting with each other. It is the prejudice against one another that hinders people from truly coming to one another and living equally. 

To wrap up, it is quite obvious that ICT is the first term or image that comes to our minds when we hear of technology. The reason is simple, ICT is like a catalyst that helps to speed up and facilitate the way people communicate with one another, and communication, undoubtedly, is an indispensable and vital part of our lives. The session was generally quite informative and engaging. However, the class could have become more engaged in debating or discussing if some more open questions had been raised, such as:

1. How can one succeed in the knowledge economy?

2. What will it take to capture the full potential of the ICT/Knowledge Revolution?(this question was originally asked by prof but there were not too many answers)

OUTLINE OF TOPICAL REVIEW PAPER

1.     Specific innovation of interest:

Facebook, a social networking site which has more than 750 million users at present, is changing the way business is conducted. It was first launched in 2004 as an internal site for Harvard students to socialize.

2.     Rationale for selecting this innovation

Facebook, as a social networking site, helps to greatly facilitate business mainly by allowing people, especially its users, to interact with one another speedily and conveniently and business basically is based on interaction between people. The change Facebook has brought about can be considered a revolutionary change since it has radically reshaped the way businessmen do their job.

3.     Proposed approach to development of paper:

*Executive summary: This review paper will be focusing on analysing the mutual correlation between the development of Facebook and business in general or in other words, Facebook’s impact on the way business is conducted. Some historical information as well as the future of both subjects will also be covered in this paper

*Background introduction:

+Brief introduction on Facebook

+Definition of business

*Historical perspectives:

+How business was conducted before Facebook becomes pervasive.

*Current situation:

+How Facebook is changing the way business is conducted in some areas, namely marketing, recruiting and sales.

+Some advices on how to use Facebook to facilitate conducting business effectively

*Future considerations:

+What changes and modifications will Facebook have to face in the future?

+How business will be affected by these changes?

+Will there be a “break-up” between Facebook and business?

Conclusion:

+Reiterate the issue

+Personal thoughts on the issue

Reference

Session 4-5/9/2011

 

The topic of the first half of this week’s session was “drivers of world change”. After briefly summarizing what had been covered last week, Prof moved on to listing some factors that have changed the world, including environmental factors, scientific discoveries and technology innovation, globalization and et cetera. Prof also mentioned some sayings of several famous men, but it was only the saying of Charles Darwin that really captivated my attention:” “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is most adaptable to change." . My mind was immediately brought back to a biology lesson in which my teacher mentioned the term “natural selection” once raised by Darwin. What that term means is species which can’t fit in their surrounding environment eventually become extinct, and that is actually the pattern which nature follows. Key message? Be flexible and versatile, and keep an open mind since the world is constantly changing.  

 

Charles Darwin

George Bernard Shaw’s saying is also in some sense interesting, but it didn’t really catch my attention as much as Darwin’s one. G.B.Shaw said:” “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.” Seemingly, the content of this saying contradicts to that of Darwin’s at first since it suggests that people shouldn’t adapt themselves to the world. But after mulling over this saying for a while, I finally found the underlying message Shaw wanted to convey was that adapting to this world, a lifestyle chosen by most of people, is just merely for surviving or in other words, living a passive live, and that lifestyle doesn’t help the world to progress. It is only by daring to step out of one’s comfort zone and make changes to the world, mold it into one’s desired shape that one can truly live a meaningful life and push the world forward. To put in simple term, changes happen everywhere, and people can choose either to be monitored by changes or make the changes themselves. The ones who can do the latter are highly rewarded.

                                                                                  G.B.Shaw

Changes, according to Prof, can be divided into two types, namely evolutionary change and revolutionary change. The former takes place quite slow, which is somehow similar to development in nature where species gradually mutate and evolve with a view to adapting to the surrounding environment. Meanwhile, revolutionary change happens very quickly and can reshape the whole world. To illustrate, the invention of wheels led to the birth of many kinds of carriages and greatly enhanced the productivity and effectiveness of transport. Revolutionary change could also be regarded as disruptive change since it can change the way things are done forever. Isn’t it quite clear that snail mails are going to meet its end soon after emails come into handy?

To be honest, I’ve never longed for this session since I have to present alone in English in front of English-speaking students for the first time of my life in this session. I did bungle, of course, but basically, everything was not as bad as I had expected. My presentation centred on “How social media has changed the world?”, and the answers can be summed up in three letters “I”: interaction, information and impediments. Undoubtedly, social media has considerably changed the way people interact or communicate with each other. In the past people had to rely on snail mails, telephones and so on to keep in touch with each other. These means of communication are not only time-consuming but also very inconvenient. Just imagine how long it may takes for a letter written in Singapore to reach the US. A month, maybe??? But now, all people have to do is grab a device which allows them to have access to internet such as a laptop or an IPhone and then enjoying chatting with their friends or relatives thanks to Facebook, Yahoo and the like. That is how social media changes the way people connect with one another. Regarding the second “I” – information, it is without doubt that nowadays, thanks to Wikipedia or Google, people find it never easier to have access to any piece of information they want to know. Some area in reality has been affected, typically politics, which can be exemplified by the presidential campaign of Barack Obama who made use of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to gain support for his cause. However, since nothing is perfect, social media also brings about impediments. According to Susan Greenfield, a brain psychologist, Facebook and the like are turning people into babies, who. As we all know, have a very short attention span and are very impatient. She claimed “: . . .brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction, of instant new screen images flashing up with the press of a key, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such behaviours and call them attention-deficit disorder.” This issue was once talked about in the class, I believe. So what can we benefit from these “I”s? Make use of social media wisely and refrain from sticking to one’s laptop or IPad all the time.

The second half of the session was mostly about managing and leading changes. Change management can be interpreted as how people can control the process of change itself while leading change actually is people’s creating changes themselves or coming with ideas that could bring about changes. Since I was then too worried about the grading of my presentation, all I can remember now is that change management and change leadership are equally important. Even though leading changes - coming up with new ideas is the mother of managing changes, changes can’t be made if people can’t apply the ideas to reality or in other words, managing it well. I was also shown a very interesting clip:

                          

As can be clearly seen, at first, people around that seemingly crazy guy just kept looking at him and do nothing. But after a while, luckily, another guy joined him and since then, people continued to join those guys. What is the underlying meaning of that clip? Leading changes is not an easy job. But after all, isn’t it clear that the outstanding guys in the history are those who dared to stand out and did the hard things?

This session was quite eye-opening, so I would rate it 8/10/.

Session 3-29/8/2011

 

A brief summary of the previous session from prof lifted the curtain of session 3. As usual, the appetizer of this session was a video, and this time, it was quite a long clip about the life of stuffs in general. Frankly, that clip really opened my eyes since it revealed a lot of interesting facts as well as presented some interesting viewpoints. Firstly, according to the speaker, “stuffs move through a system from extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal”, which has been adopted by humankind for the last 200 years. Since it is a linear process, stuffs once get disposed directly in to the environment by being thrown into the landfills or the sea will not be recycled or reused, which is without doubt a waste of money and resources as well as burden to the environment. Only by transforming the linear process into the cyclical process, which excludes the final stage (disposal) and in some sense the first stage (extraction), can humankind effectively obtained sustainable development. Not until Prof elucidated that sustainable development is a kind of development that provides humankind with all the necessities at present without sacrificing the ability of the next generations of humankind to meet their own needs did I fully grasp the meaning of this term. Seriously, gaining sustainability in development should be the ultimate aim of countries worldwide, no matter how rich or poor they are, since only by doing such can people preserve the humble amount of resources of all kinds for their children’s, grandchildren’s and so on along with saving this young yet severely damaged planet.

However, accomplishing that goal is somehow similar to using a double-edge sword. In order to achieve sustainable development, countries, especially the developing ones as well as the undeveloped ones, have to go through a couple of years of dramatic change in the whole system including the human factors as well as non-human factors, which inevitably leads to stagnant growth in economy. Technology, the main fuel for sustainable development, will have to be advanced vigorously while life will be turned upside-down!

The speaker also condemned the “consuming” mentality of millions of people in the US. Ironically, after the 9/11 disastrous event, G.W.Bush, who, firstly, as a human and secondly, as the president of a nation, was supposed to show his sympathise as well as transferring it to the others, did nothing but urged the citizens of America to shop, shop and shop to make up for the loss of the country. But this mentality were inoculated into the American quite a long time ago, dated back more than 50 years before that calamity even took placed – right after the WWII. In order to boost up the economic development, the government of America was advised to create the mind-sets for consuming in its people, for the rise in the demand would led to the surge in supply, and once the suppliers kept manufacturing and the consumers kept buying and consuming, the economy would prosper. Advertising, naïve as it seems to be, has become a powerful tool for the US government to manipulate its people. Although this solution has kept the US thriving for years, it has brought about several adverse side effects. To start with, people’s value is now calculated through the amount of goods they own. It is still true that one can still be respected if one is mentally rich, but since stuffs are more conspicuous than “brains” and people tend to make judgements on others based on their appearance, the more “stuffs”, specifically luxurious ones, one owns, the more one is respected. Another thing to be taken into consideration is that the desire to consume is driving people crazy and imprisoning them in a vicious a circle. The crave for owning more goods make people work doggedly and after a long day working, all the American can do is laying on the couch, switching the TV on and watch it. Hilariously, most of the programs on the TV are inserted with a few advertisements, which then add up the people’s desire for buying more and to afford that, people have to spend more time in their workplaces.

The first half of the session ended up with two presentations, which were not really interesting to me though presented quite well. At the dawn of the second half, Prof gave an introduction of a new term -innovation management- to everyone and defined it as a mean to create value by increasing the efficiency of translating promising concepts into high value products and services.  To illustrate, Prof showed a diagram called R-D-A   translation process, with each letter stood for Research, Development and Application respectively:

As is indicated in the diagram, the tube symbolizing “Research” is far bigger than that representing “Application”, so we can easily infer that coming up with new ideas is quite a child’s play. It is how to turn these ideas into reality, or in other word, to apply them that differentiate the geniuses and the idiots. That is why the D stage which involves translating new insights and ideas into practical application is unsurprisingly labelled “nightmare”.

Besides, I was also introduced to “the Shahi Landscape Model for technology assessment”:

                                     

ð  Key Takeaway? Standing out is the only way to surge forward.  Daring to do what others have never thought costs an arm and a leg, but the reward will be great.
The presentations of three students in the class wrapped up the whole lesson, which I believe to be pretty intriguing.(Rating 7.5/10)