Week 11

It’s been 10 weeks and it’s the last formal teaching session by Dr. Shahi today. Somehow I am kind of reluctant for the module to end. I’ve become so accustomed to attending TWC seminars on Tuesday afternoons already. I suppose it was planned that our last session would touch on forecasting for the future.

Look before, or you’ll find yourself behind – Benjamin Franklin
As usual, Dr. Shahi peppered this session with many quotes, but this quote jumped out at me among all the other quotes. It is indeed so true that we have to constantly look towards the future and plan for the future or we will inevitable find that we would be left behind in the dust.

A few drivers for why we need to assess technology and why we need to forecast where we might go in the future were mentioned by Dr. Shahi during this seminar and one of them included the need to prioritize, given limited resources, on whether and when to implement and use new innovations and technologies. As discussed in class, it can be hard to decide on when to make investments in new technologies, especially when new technologies are coming up so quickly. Technologies merely remain in the market for a short period of time before they are replaced by newer technologies.

One of the videos Dr. Shahi showed us included this list:

Fast moving world
Urbanized world
Tribal (New tribes in the world; of groups of people who have new and common interests)
Universal
Radical change
Ethical (Ethics in business is one of the key global trends)

Also, in another video which Dr. Shahi played had the speaker talking about how strategic foresight is the next frontier in business planning. Dr. Shahi then expanded on that concept by talking about strategic planning. He mentioned that we should not let ourselves be constrained by reality. We should remove that straitjacket and allow ourselves to envision what we want our future to be like. I understand where Dr. Shahi is coming from, especially because Singaporeans have been trained by our education system to think in a straight line. We tend to not think out of the box, and we tend to be more conservation and merely follow traditions. However, this may be a generalization because I admit that there are people out there who are able to think out of the box and push for their dreams to become a reality. (Although they may most likely meet skeptics who put them down)

However, like Dr. Shahi said, are we going to let these obstacles be our stumbling blocks and prevent us from dreaming, or are we going to let them be stepping stones so that we may learn and strive to achieve our dreams?

Our technologies today are possible because there were people who dared to dream in the past. If we do not dream, we will not be able to progress.

I would rate this last seminar 10/10. I thoroughly enjoyed myself during this last formal teaching lesson under Dr. Shahi, and I left the lesson pondering about the issues raised during class.