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Industry-focused science and technology research for idea economy

| Updated: December 13, 2021 21:35:15


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The industry-academia gap has been an unresolved issue in less developed countries. Academia has been after adopting academic curricula from globally reputed universities. On the other hand, the governments heve been giving the industry incentives to import state-of-the-art capital machinery from advanced countries. Despite the demand for high-end technology products and the adoption of advanced academic curricula from global best performers, why are less developed countries failing to drive industrial growth out of educational advancement is thought-provoking indeed.

QUALITY ISSUE: Poor quality of science and technology education in less developed countries is well known. Some of the commonly cited issues are "teacher quality, method and content, peer quality, facilities and resources, the effectiveness of the administration, campus politics," and many more. Despite such prevailing concerns, a section of graduates, though very small, have shown high performance in their post-graduate studies and the job market in advanced countries. Unfortunately, even those high-caliber graduates face extreme difficulty finding suitable jobs in the local industry. Does it mean that if we keep improving the quality to increase the pool of high-caliber graduates, their job situation in the local industry will worsen? Does it mean that quality advancement will have little impact in reducing the industry-academia gap in less developed countries?

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COMPETENCE DEMANDED BY THE INDUSTRY: Industry in less developed countries is after replicating or imitating foreign products from importing capital machinery and components. They are sourcing local labour, natural resources, and capital machinery operation and maintenance skills for producing economic output. As a result, there has been very little relevance of science, technology, and engineering education to meet the industry's demand. At best, the industry has been looking for skills for installing and repairing imported capital machinery for replicating imported product designs. Unfortunately, academic curricula adopted from globally reputed universities do not address this skill set.  

LESSON FROM NIKE:  Nike's journey of producing and trading ideas started with William Bowerman, co-founder of Nike, in 1974 on his invention of an athletic shoe with cleats for added traction. Since then, Nike has been revolutionising sneakers for athletes and everyone else through a flow of ideas--receiving 540 patents in 2013 alone, resulting in 4,200 active patents in 2016. For profitable integration of those ideas in sneakers, Nike has been sourcing labour from Indonesia, China, and other developing countries, and rubber, fabrics etc., from Malaysia and other supplying countries. In retrospect, Nike has been an excellent example of creating a business of ideas in traditional products like age-old footwear. Nike's idea production and trading business reached more than 73,000 jobs, $36 billion in revenue, and $1.9 billion in profit (as of 2018). By the way, why are not footwear companies in developing countries like in Bangladesh after ideas? There has been a demand for science and engineering education for producing these ideas. Until and unless the local industry creates economic value out of ideas, what is the relevance of quality enhancement in science and technology education?  

ACADEMIC RESEARCH AND UNIVERSITY RANKING: Recently, there has been a growing awareness about the importance of university ranking in less developed countries. Among other areas, attention is being given to increasing the number of publications and their citations. Hence, whatever the limited academic research capacity these countries have is being invested in expanding the number of publications. Often, such publications have no relevance to address local economic problems out of knowledge and ideas. Hence, although such publication-centric research activities have been contributing to university ranking, unfortunately, they have been a minimal contribution to addressing quality and cost issues faced by the local economy. 

RELEVANCE OF ACADEMIC RESEARCH FOR ADDRESSING THE INDUSTRY'S COMPETITIVENESS: There has been a concern that theory, advanced and promoted by academia, has minimal merit to address the industry's problem. Without having industry experience, how can academia produce knowledge and ideas for helping the industry? Let's draw a lesson from history. Prior to 1900, USA'a industrial innovation was driven by creativity out of intuition, tinkering, and craftsmanship. Among many others, Thomas Alva Edison encountered the reality that invention out of inherent creativity was not good enough to create economic value. Hence, in 1900, he set up a research and development centre for engaging science and engineering graduates to advance knowledge for producing and integrating ideas into the design of the light bulb and its production process.

In the USA, due to the evidence that roughly half of the patent holders had not even completed a college degree, in 1957, economists discouraged academic research. Such an argument was substantiated further with the data that in the USA, "between the late nineteenth century and the 1950s, wages for manufacturing workers grew faster than wages for professional workers." But the situation has substantially changed. A recent survey found that "94 per cent of U.S. patent inventors between 2000 and 2003 held a university degree, including 45 per cent with a Ph.D."  Besides, 95 per cent of their highest degrees were in STEM fields, including more than half in engineering. There could be an argument that such findings have little relevance to the industrial economy of less developed countries. Unfortunately, the reality depicts a different picture. In the globally connected competitive market economy, whatever we produce locally must be competitive with products produced in other countries. Besides, as local value addition out of low-cost labour has been shrinking, the only option to be competitive is through locally produced ideas. Hence, advancing competitiveness from locally produced ideas is of paramount importance for the industry to offset the eroding labour-based value addition.

To begin with, we should focus on the scope of increasing the quality and reducing the cost of whatever the local industry has been producing now. We should focus on the production process and also the design of products. State-of-the-art components like sensors, microcontrollers, displays, micro-motors, and actuators could be refined and fused with suitable software-centric algorithms to increase production precision, resulting in higher quality and less wastage.

The exploitation of many prevailing opportunities demands the creation of scientific knowledge and its usage in producing ideas for quality enhancement and cost reduction. Such competence is at the core of developing cyber-physical systems for driving the fourth industrial revolution. In addition to supply, the demand for such ideas should be created in the local industry. Such an exercise is vital for closing the gap between the knowledge of academia and ideas needed by the industry. Government should look into appropriate policies and regulations for empowering and encouraging both the industry and academia to create ideas out of academic research and their utilisation by the industry for addressing the competitiveness issues faced by the industry.

M Rokonuzzaman, Ph.D is academic, and researcher on technology, innovation and policy.

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