MALAYSIA is good at aiming high. When we came up with Vision 2020, no less than the former British prime minister Lady Margaret Thatcher was impressed enough to praise it.
She did not imitate it, but there was some flattery in the praise no doubt. But when it comes to technology, our aim, though similarly high, begets neither flattery nor praise. Understandably so.
We are nowhere near the list of top technology countries. Unsurprisingly, our 721.5km neighbour Singapore has made it to the top five of the Global Innovation Index 2018 list of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
But not all is lost. Malaysia is somewhere there in the WIPO index as “innovation achievers” at 35. Even mighty India is perched precariously at 57. Lesson one: size doesn’t matter.
But we need to try harder, though. There is a reason for this.
Not many Malaysians are interested in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
According to the National Council for Scientific Research and Development data, Malaysia needs close to 500,000 people in STEM-related industries by next year.
Data provided by the Education Ministry shows that just 47.8 per cent of upper secondary school students chose to do STEM subjects in 2016. Presently, the number has dropped to 44.3 per cent.
Some of these go on to be among the 7,000 engineers we produce a year. Statistics show that demand for STEM-capable workers far exceeds the supply. One estimate puts the shortfall at more than 230,000. Lesson two: you get what you teach.
What then is the right thing to teach? Former United States president Barack Obama has an answer: make our children wonder why something is the way it is and how they can make it better.
“It’s more than a school subject, or the periodic table, or the properties of waves.
It is an approach to the world, a critical way to understand and explore and engage with the world, and then have the capacity to change that world, and to share this accumulated knowledge. It’s a mindset that says we can use reason and logic and honest inquiry to reach new conclusions and solve big problems.” Lesson three: attitude determines altitude.
Japan, Singapore and others in the WIPO index seem to have taken the presidential advice. Or at least they had anticipated it. According to Tan Sri Zakri Abdul Hamid, a one-time science adviser to the prime minister, these countries start their school children on science very early.
And they get these children to solve simple practical problems that people face in life, thereby stirring creativity in young minds. Khairil Adri Adnan, chief executive officer of DreamEdge Sdn Bhd, a company that promotes innovation, says if we want curious minds, we need to discard theory for practice. We agree.
Albert Einstein had famously said: “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”
Einstein or otherwise, that is all one needs. Absent this passionate curiosity, no number of research institutes or technology parks would get us where we aspire to be.