'Lanka needs national road map for innovation'

Despite efforts to boost economic growth the focus on science, technology and innovation is inadequate. The gross expenditure on research is less than one percent. The expenditure on research and development by the private sector is remarkably low, Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies, Executive (LKIIRSS) Director Asanga Abeyagoonesekera told a seminar on 'Unleash your Mind for Tomorrow: Spurring the growth of innovation in Sri Lanka' organised by LKIIRSS.

LKIIRSS Director Asanga Abeyagoonesekera

He said the share of high-tech exports out of total manufactured exports averages less than 2% each year, since the last decade.

Following the end of terrorism in May 2009, the government is on the drive towards accelerated economic development. If Sri Lanka is to double its per capita GDP growth by 2015, advancement in science and technology, and innovation is fundamentally important.

Inventors

"This year, during my work as a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum, I travelled to Davos, and to many other important fora around the world.

I met and interacted with some amazing inventors and entrepreneurs such as Tim Burners Lee, the inventor of World Wide Web and Prof. Jeanette Wing who sequenced the human genome, Bill Gates and Marissa Mayer of Yahoo.

"The themes for many of these conferences were focused on innovation. The last conference in China was on Meeting the Innovation Imperative. With staggering population growth and complex problems emerging around the world we are all on a serious mission for innovative tools to improve our lives, with our limited resources," he said.

Sri Lanka was ranked 98 among 142 countries in the Global Innovation Index 2013. Another important report was the WEF-INSEAD Global Information Technology Report 2013 Networked Readiness Index (NRI) which measures the preparedness of an economy to use ICT to boost competitiveness and well-being.

The Nordic countries and the Asian tigers are at the top of the list. Finland (first), Singapore (second) and Sweden (third) continue to lead the NRI, with the Netherlands (fourth), Norway (fifth), Switzerland (sixth), the United Kingdom (seventh), Denmark (eighth), the United States (ninth) and Taiwan, China (10th) completing the top 10, while Sri Lanka is at the 69th place.

Nine variables

The report said, "Despite rapid adoption of mobile telephony, most developing economies lag behind advanced economies due to environments that are not conducive for innovation and competitiveness".

One of the sub index drivers is the 'innovation environment pillar'. It includes nine variables in the ease of doing business index. Red tape, conditions that allow innovation to flourish, innovative products, and availability of VC for financing innovation related projects are some of the variables.

He said that it is important that we improve these areas to improve our global ranking.

According to Prof. Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum "the traditional distinction between countries being 'developed' or 'less developed' will gradually disappear and we will instead refer to them much more in terms of being 'innovation rich' versus 'innovation poor' countries.

It is vital that leaders from business, government and civil society work together to create education systems and environments which foster innovation".

Many models

Innovation cannot succeed in isolation. A successful innovation system connects and brings together various actors - public and private organisations. It requires the inputs of technical, commercial and financial expertise.

"There are many models around the world such as Silicon Valley or the Israel model Wertheimer industry parks created in 1967, from which we can learn. But we should develop our own model. Building an innovation culture is important because I think we already had this back then.

"Some 2,500 years ago, Sri Lanka had beenan innovative country. Irrigation systems found in our ancient kingdoms astonishes modern engineers. However, innovation has been given low priority in Sri Lanka over the past several decades unlike most developed and developing countries where science and technology, and research and development are given the highest priority.

"Long-term investment in R and D is essential rather than short-term quick gains. We should work to create a knowledge hub.

Small nation

"Israel, though a small nation, has the world's highest patents and the highest expenditure on R and D, which is around 4.5%. We could achieve far greater heights.

"As a computer science student I looked at Israel's Intel Haifa plant with much interest. When Intel Santa Clara plant couldn't figure out many problems such as increasing clock speed it was the Haifa plant which came out with solutions.

"They introduced the design of the first IBM 8088 chipset which paved way for a new era of computing followed by Intel Centrino, Core 2 duo chips and dual core processing architectures with increased microprocessor speed.

"These innovations paved way not for an incremental change but rather created a revolutionary leap in the industry. You find on your computer, 'Intel inside' and I think it should be 'Israel inside'.