Session 6- BioBusiness?! The Revolution

What is Bio business? The commercial activity based on an understanding of life sciences and its processes. In today’s TWC, Prof shared about one of his pet topics, BioBusiness. Since BioBuniness is so darn big(Accounting for more than 25% of global GDP and 40% of world’s labour force), it is only logical to pay attention to it and the emerging opportunities and technologies.  Prof did a comparison of the market share comparing global, sounth Asia, east Asia and the US. He went to talk about lives in the poorer countries and the types of disease that has been killing them, we learnt the difference between the disease of deprevation and disease of excess and its trends. We also talked the increasing growth in patents for life sciences and why the dilemma of patenting a product. After sharing with us about the healthcare revolution and biomedical science revolution, the speakers for the week came up to talk. The first presentation talked about prostatic made us think of what competition should be like for disabled people, it also tickled our minds by the definition of normal for human beings. The second presentation talked about electronic skin. Though its limitation of having of replace it every 3-4 days, it has much potential because of its nano technology. The theird presentation started with a video of cloning of a mice then went on to talk about education systems and ethics.

The one thing i found most interesting in this lesson is about patents. The laws made both  encouraged and discourage companies in the BioBusiness to come up with new products. The reason for the first notion is that by giving companies a 18-20 year copyright protection, they have a license to charge and suck up as much money from the community for that period of time. The reason why it discourages some companies would be because some companies might not want to come up with tropical drugs. Spending millions of dollars in research will take many years to cover cost. Some within 18 months might not be able to do so. Helping the poor who cannot afford the drugs might have to be done by governments and charities.  What prof said about sharing a patent technology to other companies at a profit will be beneficial to the world.

Quick takeaways from the lesson:
-BioBusiness is a huge industry.
-BioBusiness Companies can generate huge revenues way surpassing fortune 500 companies.
-Unfortunately, there is a huge disparity in the business, the rich earns too much, the poor like farmers earn peanuts.
-The dealing with disease of excess in the future, the world will have to think about that.
-Prostatic limbs discussion taught me to have make sure clear distinction for rules to eliminate ambiguity.
-Electronic skins a cool technology, seeing the fruits of nano technology.
-Spending more money in education does not necessarily equate to more ethical students.
-Microsoft technology for the future might just come sooner that we think especially with all the infrastructure in place.

What I hope to see being discuss in the future. I actually will like to go one more step into the future eto see the world with Africa being the dominant player in the world’s economy, after eliminating disease of depravation. What will the rapid growth in technology lead to?

I will rate this class a 7.5/10. It opened my mind to the world of BioBusiness and its progress..

Session 5- The ICT

In today’s TWC lesson about information and communications technology, we talked about many issues in different areas of interest ranging from the definition of mass media to the internet to applying these technologies into everyday lives like wireless handphone charging to cars communicating with each other. We also talk a new term not commonly heard of.. the CKO, chief knowledge officer. Gaming was another interesting topic we talked about because of the amount of spin offs that can come out from it.

The thing I found most interesting and excite me the most was the convenience I will be experience in the years to come when devises communicates to each other. Automated driving from my car, when my car nears home, it signals to my heater, aircon, cooker etc. The idea of automation is extremely commoving, not that I’m super lazy but rather that it can save me so much time.

The next Idea that interest me is about knowledge management. Currently I believe the only course available in knowledge management out of the 3 big universities in Singapore is Masters in knowledge management in NTU. Perhaps not the biggest area in management, categorizing knowledge is still important. If one is able to categorize knowledge in our minds efficiently we will see vast improvement in 2 area: 1. Cognitive speed- being able to think much faster, we don’t have to search too hard to recall a piece of information. 2. Remembering information. In psychology we learn that if we have “folders” to store our “files” of information, we will learn much faster and remember better and longer. Knowing that knowledge management is growing, I might consider taking up courses on it.

Quick takeaways from the lesson:
-Change in mass media over the years: mass media evolved from uni-directional to multi-directional.
-What the second meaning of cloud, other than the ones we see when we look up.
-That Web3.0 is the all knowing internet, the world’s new god?
-Gaming technology have a lot of interesting spin offs.
-The technology of wireless energy is coming yay no need for heavy battery packs.

I will rate this class a 7/10. Simply it got me excited about technology again.

Individual Tropical Review Paper Outline

Peer to peer sharing

i. Specific Innovation of Interest: 

Peer to peer sharing is a platform for people to use the internet to share files. The original pioneering p2p internet service was Napster that focused on sharing of MP3 format audio files. Companies such as Gnutella, Madster, Freenet took carried on with the idea. Currently, the most popular form of peer to peer sharing is bittorrent. (deinfition of bit torrent).

ii. Rationale for Selecting this Innovation: 

Peer to peer has changed the world in more ways than one. For one, it has made available files which cannot be afford. Expensive softwares, music, videos etc. Currently there are more than a 100 million users and has BitTorrent has a greater number of users than YouTube and Facebook combined. Twitter and Facebook uses BitTorrent to distribute updates, without BitTorrent these companies will be very different.

iii. Proposed Approach to Development of Paper: 

Historical Perspective 

-Examine Napster as the original sharing website.

-Evolution due to legal issues.

Current Situation

-Current usage of peer to peer sharing. Eg. Facebook

Future Considerations

-More and more mobile phones, ipads will use it.

Session 4- What causes change?

In today’s twc lesson, we examined the different drivers of change, its implications and what decreased people mentions about innovation like Charles Dawin, George Benard Shaw and Oliver Wendell Holmes. For the second half, we learnt about the stages of when people buy products, touched on managers vs leaders. We also talked about cheese.

The things I found most interesting was “Proactively Managing Change – Understanding the Pessimism-Time Curve”. Though a little hard to comprehend at the beginning, it is a MUST HAVE concept in your knowledge vocabulary. Knowing “Uninformed optimism” will help people realize that it is normal for the High at the beginning stage to fade away. Understanding “Informed pessimism” and “Informed realism” lets team members know that hardship will definitely come and they have to persevere over the latent energy hump- they will look forward to informed realism over the hump. Framing is so important as it sets expectations for the team thus reducing dropout rates.

Top 10 Things that I learnt in today’s lesson:

1.  Dead people are good to quote as they can’t sue you.
2.  Companies should think about “wild cards” like those in the reading “Global Drivers of Change to 2060” one such wild card will be that government might implement a green policy anytime.
3. Great technology that already exist might not have been realised by other countries. Like mention in class, the wheel in the past.
4. In the chart of the New technology adoption, I probably will fall under the “Early adopters, visionaries” category.
5. The “Proactively Managing Change – Understanding the Pessimism-Time Curve” should be taught to newly formed groups. It is important to frame their minds about what’s upcoming.
6. Traditional model of Freeze-unfreeze-refreeze should make way for the newer models in this ever changing environment.
7. Look out for Africa, its up and coming.
8. When one becomes a serial entrepreneur, learn to let go!! Leave it to managers who are good at running.
9. Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
10. Managers imitate, Leaders originate.

Further discussion can elaborate on how students can be change makers; the initial steps required and how to get support for our idea.

I will personally rate this class a 7.5/10. Although the student’s presentation was not as well delivered as hoped, I learnt a lot for a 3 hours class with knowledge useful in the future.

Week 3- Caring for my world, making change happen

This week, prof started of with a brief summary of the past few weeks,after which we saw the video of “The story of stuff”, which was a very interestingly composed video of the processes of which goes behind making of a product.It is interesting to know the hidden cost not reflected in the price tag and how it can cost the environment sand the people in the other countries so much. We then discussed the 3 readings. Karishma followed by sharing an article on how companies are killing off the ocean's habitat when they are use their cooling system. I was mentally scarred by this presentation I cannot help thinking of the poor fishes being sucked through the system of the cooling system. A fellow student suggested using a filtering system for the cooling plant which scared my cortex even more with the image of a fish permanently stuck to the wire mess of the systems struggling till it dies. Anyway, the second half of the lesson was focused on the Integrated Policy Planning (IPP) for Sustainable Industrial Development. Looking at what the European Union had proposed seemed quite promising. We went on to talk about the process of translating an idea to reality, going through the nightmare stages. We also had the opportunity to see prof's cute drawing of the valleys and the hills. Lastly, it ended with a presentation by Daniel on electronic cigarettes.

A few interesting ideas in this lesson. First was the Value creation pipeline and RDA translation process. From idea to product or service out in the marketplace, consumers do not really see the process which goes on behind the scene. We'll at least the most of the hidden cost through the process is reflected in the price tag especially in the bio medical industry paying so much for a pill. I thought the perspective from dream to nightmare to reality is super funny for an entrepreneur. I totally agree that the diamond shaping and polishing process is a nightmare. A thought that sparked in my head was the question of why are the so many good ideas but only a small fraction of them are implemented. I thought about it for a while, and felt that an inexperienced entrepreneur can hardly survive on his own. He needs a effective team and a mentor who has been there and done that. this will make the Nightmare less scary. A team of not just someone who is good at knowing the piece of technology, business people are also required, so are people who can market and IS people. Kind of like what our project groups are like.

The key take home message for me will be that fact that there is a nightmarish developmental stage before a project is out in the marketplace.

The issue that I will like to further discuss will be the evolution of entrepreneurs. Form the past where there is little inventions and innovations till this generation where entrepreneurs are all using the internet, how different really is it? Is there a change in mindset?

I will personally rate this lesson a 8 out of 10. Although it was on a Saturday, and I was a bit grumpy because of that, it really opened my eyes to especially on the part of the innovation process.

Week 2- The rise and fall of great powers and human development.

In this lesson we looked back into time and see the great powers of past. We examined counties like  USA, China, Roman empire and Britain, examining why these great powers rise and fall. We looked at factors like the black plagues and the openness of the countries leaders to new ideas.

In the second half of the lecture, Prof talked about the Human development index, addition of happiness to the index and how the world has been coming together to fight global problems.

What I found interesting was the reasons for the rise and fall of great powers. Thinking about how just 1 strain of plague can destroy an empire or just by a change in attitude- becoming more arrogant can cause a fall of a great nation. On the other hand, the domination of successful countries can be done with a ship of crew with better weapons.

What I found interesting for the second part of the lesson was the fact that the world is actually coming together to fight common problems(or at least attempting to). Most of the goals does little to benefit richer participating countries. The Millennium Development Goals is a very good initiative for the poorer countries, however in it the only goal which actually might benefit the rich is Global partnership. the rest.. marginal benefit. I'm not sure how countries persuade each other to agree to these goals.. but it's a very good initiative.



Most importantly what I took away is this: You don't need much to rule the world. Just an idea can rule the world. Just like know how to operate a cannon can help you rule by coercive force. Knowing an extra something can bring you great influence.


In the next few lessons, I will like to further the discussion about great powers and how the world are shaped by their leaders. This is especially true for a more authoritarian type of government where the words of one really has a global impact- Nuclear crisis for instance.

Another topic I find very useful to discuss will be translating ideas into something greater. in class many great ideas have been shooting around, same with the facebook page. Are these ideas just "Oh that's interesting, good read, good entertainment" or could it be "Wow, that's really interesting, I can actually implement that in school or at home". The skills set to use concepts discussed to make actual change is what differentiates a talker from a doer. If just 1% of the ideas can be used, the world will be a much better place.

I would personally rate this lesson a 8/10. The concepts discussed went deep. Instead of focusing on the actions/events, we managed to discuss the underlying concept of their attitudes, being open/hungry as opposed to being closed up and not interest in learning new ideas leading to dominant player being a rising or falling star. 

Week 1- It all starts here

In our first lesson after the icebreakers and going through the coruse outline, we explored the idea of how fast the world is changing and the factors that contributed to the change watching "Guns, Germs and Steel"

"Whatever I learn might be outdated by the time I am year 3" This was the interesting observation which stuck in my head even after the end of the lesson. How can technology change so fast? I might be wasting my money in university! Well of course not. I will learn skills to ride the change and might even be an innovator.

The main take away points from the first lesson were that we have to be open to change and keep up to date with technology. Because technology keeps changing, we should not just acquire knowledge (as that keeps changing) but more cruicially develop the skills such as creative thinking, being able to see emerging trends and being entrepreneurial to cope with the evolving society.

A few weeks before the first lesson, I listened to a entrepreneur pitching his idea. This statement was in-sync with the concept I learnt in the first session. He said: "People are moving from an internet based society to an Apps based world". He was from a new start-up company trying to get fund for their application based game for Iphones, Ipads and Android systems.

I was taken aback after listening to that statment. Most of us are still trying to learn how we can fully utilise the internet and what we are learning is already moving on the downward trend. As of today, Apps have already overtaken internet and its usership will still continue grow and thus I will like to explore this idea that Applications are the new in thing and the possibility of making money from it.

 The diagram below shows a comparison between the usage of mobile Apps vs web consumption. It shows the upward trend of consumers spending time on Apps.

 Probably in the next "shift happens" video, we will likely see more about Apps.

I would rate the first lesson a 6/10. Although we went through interesting concepts like the speed of changes in the world, we had to go through the course outline which was fundamental but dry.