TWC Week 7 - BioBusiness Revolution: Agribiology, Environmental Life Sciences and Industrial Biotechnology

TWC Week 7 - BioBusiness Revolution: Agribiology, Environmental Life Sciences and Industrial Biotechnology 

This week’s session was focus on the Agribiology, Environmental Life Sciences and Industrial Biotechnology similar to that of last week’s topic.

The future on agricultural biotechnology is predicted to be generating huge benefits to the society. Before we prove this point, let us look at the possible pros and cons of this prospect.

The rise of the new generation of farmers called the farmists is expected to be more knowledgeable with skills equipped to work effectively with technology. And this will replace the way of the traditional farming methods, which will inevitably eradicate the problem of slow and poor agricultural farming. However, the problem still lies in the issue of the outcome of the traditional farmers.  Will traditional farmers lose the rights to farming as compared to farmists? Are traditional farmers provided with the means to self improving to the level of farmists?  Although there are potential job aspects in the farming industry, farmers’ rights should be protected and IPR given should not be too unfair towards the parties involved.

The idea of our choice of genetic modifications or not ultimately depends on our own personal interests, the demand and supply of the market.  Even though most of us are consuming GM food unknowingly,, till date it have been proven that there have not much side effects  from such consumption. However, how are we suppose to judge the term “long” to have the negative effects to take place like in comparison to the effects of being diagnose with cancer. This is still the ultimate considering factor for us to ponder on.  On the whole, I feel that the consumption of GM is fine as long as there is no substantial evidence to prove that it does actually threatens the lives of human beings.

On environmental and industrial life sciences, more could be done on the waste management and industrial enzymes. One interesting issue discussed during class was the process of management in waste into food consumption for human and animals. I feel that this is an unfeasible plan, why? Let us just recap on the feasibility of NEwater. Although the fundamental solutions are implemented, the effectiveness of the implementation is not recognized.

Another notion is the problem of food scarcity due to the increasing population over the supply of food.  Therefore, GM technologies are definitely needed to curb and solve the problem of food security as compared to the traditional methods. In addition, economic, social, political leaders should play their part in encouraging and educating to ensure the measures are provided for and enforced.

From reading 4, it concludes that both conventional technology and biotechnology are needed in order to meet the increasing rise in population demands. Besides having developments at lower production costs; it also has important environmental advantage such as developing cereal varieties with greater tolerance for soil alkalinity, free aluminum, and iron toxicities. The recombinant DNA techniques can speed up the development process too. Throughout the years, there has been an increase in the power of genetic engineering to improve the nutritional quality of our food crop species. A positive note highlights that it can eventually have profound impact for millions of people with deficiencies of vitamin A and iron, causes of blindness and anemia, respectively.
It considered the anti-science crowd to be rather contradicting towards the purpose and aims of GM food, as till date there has been no credible scientific evidence to suggest that the ingestion of transgenic products is injurious to human health or the environment. Thus, what led to the rise of anti-science group? Anti-science group should consider the evidential fact that new technology showed positive impacts too.  More importantly, they should look into the aspects concerning civil societies equity issues related to genetic ownership, control, and access to transgenic agricultural products. It explains that GM is the progressive harnessing of the forces of nature so as to benefit the feeding of human beings.

And lastly, disparity between the poor nations and the affluent nations are still in existence. Ultimately, new technology are more easy in achieving problem of global food security where politicians, educational, religious leaders involved must understand and be prepared for the problems ahead.

WEEK 6: The BioBusiness Revolution 1: Healthcare and the Biomedical Sciences: Past, Present, Future

WEEK 6:  The BioBusiness Revolution 1: Healthcare and the Biomedical Sciences: Past, Present, Future

Let’s have a brief introduction of what biobusiness revolution is about:

-     Has the potential and will transform our lives and our economies which could be a likely mean for us to achieve a sustainable development.

-     BioBusiness already constitutes over 25% of global GDP and employs some 40% of the world’s labor force.

Now, taking a quick look in the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGr3fq5Ho-I

It shows that the global world today is taking a further step to encourage innovation in the biobusiness industries. A recent major event such as the BIO Business Forum at the 2010 BIO International Convention marks the global platform for biotechnology.
It talks about how today’s society are able to tap globally to be more efficient in exploring partnering options. By capitalizing this advantage of productive, cost-efficient event and open the door opportunities, provides companies to collaborate and discover the next licensing and business development solutions.

Even though biobusiness have been proactive in many countries and still arising, there are keys factors which we have to consider still. For example; how the US healthcare business could actually be a major spender as compared to South Asia, East Asia yet showed no improvements in the bio sector. The failures to create the value add for the need in healthcare and health improvements ultimately faces a huge problem. Thus, tools and technology implementation have to be innovated to create value for the problem rather than just to cover up the problem.

In the class, the readings mentioned lots on the benefits of BioBusiness Industry.

We see that conditions of developing countries today lack even basic public health infrastructure and services – resulting in a large proportion of their populations facing bleak prospects for health and well-being. While modern approaches and technologies have been a potential to radical transforming public health and healthcare for those who previously could not afford such care as well as providing excellent levels of care for those who can afford.

In addition, a key issue is whether the benefits of innovation are rising faster or slower than the costs. It depends on our ability to determine the value of output from the health services sector, and putting a value on a longer life or a higher quality of life is hard to appraise

Pharmaceutical industry in Asia-Pacific market is among the fastest growing markets in the world.
The need for new developments in information and communication technology, and in medical devices for disease and wellness monitoring, create the opportunity to establish innovative service delivery approaches that are more cost-effective and can result in great improvements in health outcomes.

The field of bio-IT requires the cutting-edge information of technology and science to enable scientists to make better sense of the data and information so as to facilitate testing and evaluation of biotech products and their subsequent registration and marketing.

Apart from that, there is a great disparity in terms of privileges rights in terms of originator and innovators. We see that First World industries today are protected by "property systems, IPR," are deem to be clever (inventions). While the livelihoods of indigenous people, such as farmers are considered contributory and maintaining--but not originating. Thus, in most cases, indigenous and traditional societies are given a subordinate status.

Ultimately, there are 2 significant benefits to be realize in the future

• Improved national health, through improved clinical performance and early access to innovative medicine.

• Increased national wealth: enhanced Gross Domestic Product by maintaining and supporting a high growth, high margin, and high value-added, knowledge-based industry.

Lastly, I have found an interesting article regarding “Brain Coprocessors: The need for operating systems to help brains and machines work together” on this website: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/26329/?p1=Headlines&a=f

Highlights on main points as follows:

-          There has been a surge in invention of technologies that enable the observation or perturbation of information in the brain.

-          It explores for purposes as diverse as lie detection, prediction of human decision making, and assessment of language recovery after stroke.

-          Where is provides a platform in understanding the brain and engineering functions.

-          Therefore, in the future, such system architectures might be capable of very advanced functions such as providing just-in-time information to the brain of a patient with dementia.

TWC WEEK 5 – ICT AND WORLD CHANGE

Society of today relies heavily on the use of info-communication technologies (ICT). And of course, this is a known fact to all of us. In fact, the world has benefited through the means of ICT. Such drastic change allows us to research on any information all over the world within a short timeframe, know of all the first hand news through mass media as well as enhancing our way of interaction with different forms of communication means. Thus, getting to know information of today is said to be readily available.

I agreed with what Prof. mentioned in class, “Automation of efficient operation magnifies efficiency” and vice-versa. It is definite that this meaning holds truth. But it does not always mean that efficient operation will eventually result high efficiency, low or average efficiency may result in un-circumstances too.

The digital divide, till today such problems exist. Are measures like providing the less needy, un-developed countries with the appropriate ICT knowledge and skills going to be helpful? I would go for this idea. There is a saying which states “give a person a fish and it will fill his stomach, teach a person to fish and it will fill his stomach forever.” Therefore, we should think about the rationale of rather trying to improve the disparity of digital divide, why not solve it. By treating the problem, this enables un-developed countries to adapt to ICT and ride on the benefits of it, moving away from digital divide.

Although ICT can do us good in many ways, still we have to be cautious of the dangers of ICT. There are always pros and cons to every idea that comes along.

Food for Thoughts on readings:

There are many readings and the readings on Cloud computing differentiates itself from the rest.

Having said that, cloud computing has contributed to efficiency in private and public sectors, promoting growth, competition and business creation. Such application allows us to access all our documents from any device anytime anywhere. Goggle doc is one good example. Cloud computing generally saves on huge cost and creates multilateral network effects among businesses. Thus, it certainly have a great impact on the global economy since the use of cloud computing provides huge benefits as compared to traditional use of storage through servers. However, It cloud computing is seen to remain limited for the future years ahead, where it will have significant macroeconomics impact. Ultimately the most fundamental of this IT is the size of its fixed cost savings. All in all, the use of cloud computing definitely has its drawbacks like systematic risk, security and privacy issues, reliability, data governance and lastly the complexity of usage. However, applying cloud computing policies have to be studied in a way to optimize the process of adoption of the new technology and to strengthen its benefits.

Creation of ICT also helps in the pursuing the millennium development goals (MDGs). I feel that government should do something such as to exercise a choice that will secure the future for today’s generation. How do we include ICTs into MDGs agendas?  Basically, ICT can be used to enhance the capacity to monitor, measure, and report on the progress of these goals. It is vital that ICTs too provides a role in development and not just economy growth

Also, the networked world today allows us to bond from one to one, one to all and many to many. Expansion of access to the network provides more powerful human to machine interfaces. Thus, it tells us that today’s centers of information and resources become ever less important.  One important factor we have to consider will be to balance control and freedom of such uses and this leads to the second law of technical change: Expect unexpected effects.

In conclusion, I feel that ICT has more to come with new innovation and creation which will provide much more in the future.

Week 4, Drivers of World change & Change Management and Change leadership

TWC, Week 4, Drivers of World change & Change Management and Change leadership


There are in fact many drivers that can lead to world changes.

Environmental Drivers has been a huge problem in today’s society. Society has been precautious in minimizing pollutions and global warming. However, precautionary actions taken are just treating the problem and not solving the root of the problem. Considering the issue of Global warming; does a reduction in CO2 emissions helps in reduction of such driver? Definitely more applications to the diagnosis of global warming issue have been introduced. Until today, global warming is still a major problem. I feel that society should predict what would be the outcome of the effects of global warming and draft precaution plans to be prepared for the worst since this driver is unstoppable.

Looking at the driver of “Germs”, I find it as an unpredictable driver of world change because it happens just so sudden which catches all of us off guard. Say for example the SAR case where countries all over the world were badly infected and deaths were inevitable.

Dark Ages and plague epidemics

Depicts a story of Roman Empire in the 2nd century A.D. where they were the beacon of learning, trade, power and prosperity in the western world. However, their success was not sustainable. Their Empire came to an end by the 5th century where barbarian warriors came in waves of invasion slaughtering, stealing, and settlement. Because of a changed in culture, Europe had been hit by famine, plague, persecutions, and war constantly resulting no peace.

Ultimately, the Western Europe would rise from the Dark Ages to a level of cultural and political power unseen for a thousand years.

Video of Dark Ages on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhcJpalbFxo

Global Drivers of Change: Their implications for the Zambian Construction Industry.

It shows how Zambian construction industries took a change from the old construction corporation to a brand new construction landscape. Such driver of change has lead to a creation of new market place which provided liberalisation and privatisation programmes and the rise of free market. As such, it created new businesses as well as attracting international financial investment leading to a globalization of its economy.

It can be seen that the key driver was its technological changed. Transformation of Zambian construction industry had created global telephony, satellite communications and video links widely available providing information easily accessible. Thus, it had become a platform for opportunities and challenges for international marketers.

However, to maintain such an industry, it is always crucial to keep implementing and seeking new changes. The continuous of business transformations is therefore inevitable.



Change management and change leadership.

We often discuss how to differentiate managers and leaders.

Managers are the brains of a business – concerned about the business, establish systems, create rules and operating procedures.

Managers – react when it happens.

Leaders are the heart of a business - settle a direction, communicating it to everyone and keeping people motivated when times get tough.

Leadership – leader takes initiative - make it happen, react when it happens.

The article “Directing and Managing Change. Manfred Davidman” shows:

For directing and managing change, it all boiled down to the importance of this 3 rules,

1) Adapting to chance and deciding what needs to be done.

2) Planning ahead, getting results and evaluating progress.

3) Appraisal interviews and target- setting meetings.

Basically it tells us that we have to predict what the likely possible issues (By adapting to Changes) and plan ahead (where we need to forecast and do planning) and then act accordingly (this is where our decision policies and implementing policies have to be certain). Besides all of these, we have to consider the importance of style of management in achieving results too. It plays a role in the effects of relationship between management and workers in producing effective and efficient results to meet the targets.

Ultimately, I feel that all of us have to be proactive in managing change. And yy doing so, the chances of us achieving something great would be higher.