Week 3 was spent in Malaysia. The World Economic Forum considers Malaysia a ”developing” country and the signs of progress are everywhere.
This week in Malaysia was all business. I met up with 2 other colleagues from SRI International and we had a full week of delivering workshops to entrepreneurs, faculty, graduate students and staff at UTM (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia). The government of Malaysia has a national agenda for innovation. SRI’s work here is part of that agenda as we help researchers at the Universities to select the best innovations for commercialization. This week we delivered four programs:
- A 1-day CEO Training for new entrepreneurs from UTM that are starting companies.
- One-on-one coaching, “Value Creation Adviser”, where we meet with entrepreneurs and researchers for in-depth discussions to help them position their innovations for commercialization (obtaining funding, licensing or starting companies).
- A 2-day workshop on “The Five Disciplines of Innovation” for faculty, grad students & staff. This provides a framework and common language for innovation.
- A 1-day Business Terms Workshop to introduce researchers and technical faculty members to important basic business concepts.
We saw some interesting innovations in bio-tech like: therapies to help with stroke recovery & systems for analyzing the compounds in herbal medicines. In the automotive field we saw innovations in air conditioning systems & dual fuel engines. In other areas we saw the training of bees to “sniff” for drugs or bombs, waste water treatment systems and power planning software. The innovations are always interesting and intriguing!
The nice thing was no long airplane flight between week 2 & 3; I got the pleasure of being in the same time zone for 2 weeks in a row. Malaysia is a very tropical country and the developed areas are surrounded by jungle. Every morning I would wake to the sound of rain and songs of birds harmonizing with voices very different from those we enjoy in the US. I am not a bird watcher but I suspect that this is a bird watching paradise!
Malaysia borders on Singapore. It is amazing how different the two countries are. Singapore is a very modern, progressive & industrialized country with a high standard of living. Singapore is a small country whose landscape is dominated with concrete and high rise buildings. Malaysia is vastly different. It is like stepping back in time ~20 years. It is a developing country with a wide range of sophistication from rural areas with small farms that operate as they have for hundreds of years by hard work and no electricity *to* Kuala Lumpur in the north which rivals Singapore.
The landscape is dominated by Palm Plantations which is a main component of their agricultural economy producing palm oil. Almost 50% of the prescription medications that we use in the US have origins in the jungles or rain forests of the equatorial countries, like Malaysia. Malaysia is very proud of their contributions to world health in preserving and cultivating the jungles & forests.
I love sunrise and sunset. I enjoy the changing colors and the first (or last) glimpses of the sun as earth changes position. In California the daily show will last for 45 minutes to an hour. Here, so very near the equator the day rushes in. There is a burst of sunlight in the morning with transition from dark to light in 10 minutes! At the equator the days are exactly 12 hours long all year round with a variation of only a few minutes. The sun comes up at 7:27am and goes down at 7:27pm this time of year.