Survival. It’s about adapting to change. Change is something that is inevitable in our lives. By adapting we survive, we are able to chug along and keep pace.

But it is only when we effect a change that we will thrive, pull away from the pack of survivors and take the lead.

New discoveries, new inventions, new ways of doing things have been changing the way we live for thousands of years. At the very core of change is creativity and innovation.

The ancient history of the East is filled with remarkable innovation. People of Egypt, India and China were the world’s first great innovators. They built the Pyramids, developed calendars, astronomy, traditional medicine, transportation, paper and printing, the list goes on.

So groundbreaking were their discoveries and innovations that many survive to this day and are part of our everyday life.

The need to innovate always came from necessity. The inspiration came from the need to reinforce and enhance key national interests in those times such as religion, defence, health, travel and trade.


World’s richest economies are also the world’s most creative and inventive

The situation is not much different today, except that countries of the West have overtaken the East in their ability to effect change through their investment in creativity and innovation.

These are the nations that now lead the world. These are nations that are now the world’s most advanced economies because they are also the world’s most inventive and most innovative. They are the world’s richest with well developed and creative industries that continuously research and develop the next step forward.

These are nations that give priority to design and creativity which are strategic to building national competitiveness.

At the very base, providing the thrust that has moved these nations forward is people. Educated, skilled, competitive, creative and innovative people. People tuned in to creativity and innovation in everything that they do.

These are people who are able to turn information and knowledge into products, systems and services. And these are generating wealth, more than US$7.5 trillion worth which constitutes an estimate of the total value of world trade today.

Malaysia earns a small portion of that, roughly less than US$100 billion. But we can do better than that. We just need to upgrade our capabilities in all areas of the economy.

We must be able to originate, create and innovate. We must have human capital that understands how to wield creativity and arrive at innovation.


Malaysia needs a creative and innovative mindset to acquire competitive edge

Now with transitional economies like China attracting foreign investment, especially in the areas of manufacturing, Malaysia has to look towards strengthening its distribution network, the marketing and promotion of Malaysian products and services to gain the edge that will sustain the country’s remarkable growth of the last four decades.

We need creativity to lift our products to compete more effectively.

We need to make more strategic use of creativity to balance the positive image of this country.


Malaysians are creative but a strategy is lacking

Malaysians are highly creative, but the energy must be harnessed strategically to enable the business community to penetrate the world market with a clear difference.

We need our manufacturers to understand the process of innovation as we have the ability to produce quality products.
Our capabilities are proven through the number of international brands we have created. But it is not enough.

We need a major breakthrough involving as many as our SMIs as possible to understand design, creativity and innovation for Malaysia to make an impact on the world.

But a key fact remains in that we need to address the source where we can build our competitiveness. We need people who are creative, inventive and innovative.

To be able to have such skilled human capital we need to ensure that education allows these three elements to be incorporated in the curriculum, the extra-mural activities and the examination.

There is very little time left. New developments in technology are rapidly making the products we produce obsolete in a very short time. New and fast developing economies are eating into our profits already.

We must gather the strength of our SMIs to focus on innovation as our way forward.