I was kind of disappointed at myself for being late again in class but luckily i did not miss out on any important things in the class. Entering the class, we were being directed to the whiteboard behind us and it writes,
"Sustainability requires a shift from linear to circular thinking.
Old industrial Model :
Development verse Environment Well-being
Sustainable Industrial Model:
Economic Development & Environment Well-being"
by Prof Shahi
After which he showed us a video from YouTube on " Story of Stuff, Full Version; How Things Work, About Stuff " which talks about how today world is actually moving away from linear sustainability where the raw material being extracted will only end up being dumped once they are of no use. Hence, the video also suggested that the world should move towards circular way of thinking such as recycling the products once they are no use. Due to finite amount of resources that we have in the world, we have to adopt this so as to ensure that our future generations would be able to use them too. Looking at the rate of how The United States is using up resources in spite of having only five per cent of the world population, is definitely stupefying me. Imaging if every countries in the world consume as much as them, we would indeed need more than 6 planet, Earth, to sustain our needs.
We move on to the readings where different people touch briefly on what those readings are about. Having read the article for : " Environment Fact Sheet on industrial development" i share the same view suggested by one of the classmate regarding the point the source was biased towards the European side and logically, it will be so as this is being publish by the European Commission. This article illustrates the need to increase the standard of living of people through better health benefits, education, better insanitary etc. but we should not neglect the existing environmental problems like pollution, deforestation, increase in landslides etc. Five different facts are also presented for this article mainly talking about what has been done to ensure that all the visions and goals are achieved.
After the discussion of the readings, prof Shahi touched on the point that when countries move from less develop to developing and lastly developed. The environment damage can actually depict by a inverted "U" shape graph which i look up online and found this interesting article title "The Environmental Kuznets Curve: Its Validity and Implications". It illustrates the point that as countries start to industrialize or develop, their level of environment degradation will increase until some income threshold is met and afterwards decrease.However, this article provides a different viewpoint on the EKC where it is stated that this curve is different for different countries and also it does not seem appropriate for policy maker to use this curve to structure out their policy as the time frame is not taken into consideration in the curve. Furthermore, the fact that the income threshold of every single country is different and unpredictable thus by the time this threshold is achieve the damage on the environment would have been irreversible. Points like developed countries could have lesser environmental damage shown is due the the production of toxic materials oversea before importing back to the hometown just trigger my curiosity as how many countries actually do that. Despite implementing policy to achieve lesser environmental damage and investing in innovation of greener technology, developed countries like the United States are still having increasing sign of greenhouse emission. Have they not reach the income threshold? If dominant player like them are still not reaching it, then when will the other world achieve them? All these are the question for us to ponder over and thing about.
Next comes the part on individual oral presentation where Bernadette presented the topic on urban aquaculture,Yu Hui presented on Clean technology in Israel and lastly Leon using a different style of presentation did on the growth of google and influence around the world. Eventually, the lesson move towards innovation management. Prof Shahi showed us a code by Tom Peter and it inspires us to think of ideas and doing "something else" which i feel is differentiating between those existing products and to improvise on them to get something new. Hence, we move on to this picture below that depicts what companies can do to fully utilize the opportunity given to them.
The ideal place would be valley to summit or cloud to summit as summit accommodates the market with new products as having high barrier to entry, lesser competitors is sound just like a monopoly states.
Mainly, when talking bout innovation and technology the first thought that will come in mind is research and development. This is where many companies, corporations and government will adopt when they need to achieve new methods. Apple for example has always been coming up items ahead of time and amaze the people. They are constantly doing R and R to achieve better and new products unlike Microsoft that is remaining at status quo. Apple is always improving and introducing the market with the idea of best desktop, best tablet, best Mp3 all these happen in just 3 years and an article in New York Times shows that Apple could have already overtake Microsoft http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/technology/27apple.html. Hence, come the question if innovation should be technologically driven or market driven? To me, i feel that Brainstore where they will help companies to think of a new way to come out with new products or even new approach to some issue.
CLASS RATING
I would give this week a 7/10 as definitely i enjoy the class every week where i get to be exposed to different viewpoints and insight of the interesting topics being discussed. I will look forward to the next week class on driver of world change , change management and change leadership.
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