Creative Industry

Berita Harian, 1 April 2010

Innovation, creativity needs to be applied to education

In line with efforts to strengthen the development of the country towards achieving developed nation status, various measures have been undertaken by the government to ensure that national ambitions are achieved, including a focus on aspects of innovation and the creative industries.

Follow the views of the President of Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (LUCT), Prof. Emeritus Tan Sri Dr. Lim Kok Wing regarding the country’s creative industry and the importance of innovation when it comes to generating the economy, as related to Varsiti reporter, Basir Zahrom.

Q: What is the definition of innovation and the creative industry in your opinion?

A: In this country, the definition of creative industry is more focused on music, film, television and animation, when it in fact actually covers design, architecture, communications, culture, heritage and other areas except science.

If all those fields are not applied continuously, they will die out and become extinct. For example culture will have become extinct hundreds of years ago if not practiced and developed to the present generation.

Innovation is the creation of a product or service that’s better, faster and with a more creative design. Being innovative means improving what exists. Therefore, becoming innovative is important if you want to gain a competitive edge in all walks of life. It cannot be ignored.

Q: We can see the difference between the progress achieved by a country that emphasizes innovation, creative industries and vice versa. Can you give an example of what the difference is and why we need them in developing countries?

A: An innovative society is a society of high quality and each developed country is a country of innovation. For example in Asia, the first country to innovate is Japan, followed by Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

Whether you realize it or not, all the island countries do not have mineral resources, but with a good level of innovation, they grew rapidly by focusing on the industrial production of intellectual property. This industry has proven to be beneficial because it involves the export of products to other countries, but the fact remains that in this country, we still prefer loan products such as buildings, houses, and others that can only be sold once and not very profitable, especially during the economic crisis, as opposed to intellectual property with its high marketability.

There’s no need to think of competing with long-established brands because there are many countries with people that want to use a car but cannot afford to buy expensive brands. I give the example of the car because we have metal and petroleum, just that we just need to work faster, know how to create and design well so we won’t lag behind the products of other countries. Can we do some things better than other countries? The answer is not whether we can or not, but we must. It’s not a good idea to always complain about how small our country is because of its total population of only 27 million. That total is not small if you compare it to the four million in Finland and there are plenty other countries in Europe that have less than six million people.

Q: In the field of education, how can innovation be applied so that we can cultivate innovation from the school level?

Education definitely needs innovation. Even before pre-school, knowledge of innovation should be given exposure.

Not everyone understands the concept of K-economy unless we have innovation in education because innovation starts with knowledge.

However, creativity and innovation will not happen if there is no incentive, so students should be encouraged by all parties. They shouldn’t be learning just to pass the examination alone, that’s rote learning and not the right way to think.

We always want the students in this country to be creative, innovative and be able to think critically, but do we create a system that encourages them to do so? Today, our students may have changed, but the question is, are they changing fast enough?

Have they changed enough?

We need to know where we want to go, how fast we want to grow and how quickly we need to innovate to become a developed nation by 2020.

Q: With the present accomplishments in the fields involving innovation, are we fully prepared to realize Vision 2020?

Our country is growing rapidly with the provision of the technology and infrastructure that we see, but all that is in terms of physical facilities. Highly-skilled human capital is still much needed because in this case we are still trying to catch up.

We need to become a country that is truly innovative with education policies that are more open to become a truly global education hub. Those elements will allow us to compete, it’s like a competitive sporting event, we must play to win and for that we must know what must be done.

We must create more global champions in the industries and export what they’re capable of, we need to have a strong base at home and focus on specific markets.

The Internet with its open access is the best medium for other countries to know us and vice versa. So we must reassure our people that they are talented. I personally think that we are a conservative society. The change is not easy, but if it is delayed we will not succeed because other countries move so fast.

I’ve been saying all these things over 20 years ago, and it can be found in the third edition of the book ‘Innovation: Enabling Transformation’ which was published recently.

Q: In your opinion, what is needed to ensure that we are at the realistic level of performance in order to meet the target?

All parties should cooperate in this regard, especially the government and the private sector. There’s no point to having an industrious private sector if the administrative party sets too many rules.

We need to build a passion for innovation. The development of creative minds must be made a national agenda. If we are not earnest in promoting creativity and encouraging innovation, the process of economic transformation towards innovation is not likely to happen.

Copyright © 2012 Limkokwing University of Creative Technology. All Right Reserved.
Designed & maintained by World Wide Web Domination, Centre for Content Creation.