A new competitiveness paradigm Essays

A new competitiveness paradigm Essays A new competitiveness paradigm Essay A new competitiveness paradigm Essay The challenge of the Twenty First Century for Malaysia is to define a niche area to form a new competitiveness paradigm. The pace, direction and quanta of change at all levels demonstrates that new modalities are needed to cope with the uncharted revolution in the products that we consume as well as in the way we live and do business. The driving forces of change are the advancement in technologies, especially information and communication, as well as computing, biotechnology, telecommunications and transportation. Transnationalisation of these technologies and increasingly democratized means of design, production and distribution add to the forces of change. On the soft side, a simultaneous change in consumer behaviour is observed, shifting towards a new value driven tier of consumers. The trend is towards willingness to pay more for the right fit and embedded customer information in products and services. On human capital, the change is towards development of high skills and cognition. At the industry level, the trend is embedding of customer information, Further, inventory build-up or long lag times in capacity planning are no longer the phenomenon due to fundamental improvement in mechanisms enabling production and inventory response to incoming signals. Likewise, many other cognitive problems in private enterprises are solved. At the heart of these advances is new information paradigm of timely information (when) of the right architecture and resolution (what) and enabled by strategically positioned capture mechanisms (how). One will wonder how K-Economy fits into this picture. Well, Malaysias aspiration has been to leapfrog from the Industrial era to a post-Industrial era focusing on information, upstream and downstream research and intensifying knowledge in the entire economic activities. The time is right for such a shift by injecting a catalyst knowledge in the economic performance.   The definition of K-Economy is directly on the acquisition, generation, distribution and utilization of knowledge in all economic activities. Knowledge becomes the strategic resource as, inputs, processes, systems, or as outputs. There is an increasing returns associated with these resources. The determinants of success of national economies and enterprises, thus, depend on their effectiveness in gathering and utilizing knowledge. The structural shift from the Production economy to a K-economy turns around high volume production to high value inputs, processes, systems and outputs. Ideas, relationships and communication are highly leveraged upon. The requirements of the K economy are, thus, a shift from mass-production to mass-customizations solutions that creates value demanded by the new value-driven tier of consumers. In laymans term, K-Economy simply means ability to use knowledge to create new value and wealth. Wealth is measured by the results of knowledge that is inventively applied. ? In the Agricultural economy, wealth was measured by land and produce. Thus the more land and agricultural produce you had, the richer you were. ? In the Industrial economy, wealth was measured by industrial output. The more products you were able to generate in your factories, the richer you were. The Knowledge economy (K-economy) takes these previous economies one step further. Wealth today is not only measured by agricultural or industrial products, but by the new value we can create through the resourceful application of knowledge. Thus, the K-economy includes all human economic activities of previous eras, such as agriculture and industry, but it introduces new activities that were not prominent or possible before. In K-economy agriculture, for instance, knowledge could be put to work more effectively through better planting materials, improved horticultural practices or enhanced means of trading agricultural products. On the other hand, new K-based industries are being conceived that were not possible before, such as telemedicine or web-based learning. In this case, traditional modes of delivering these services are being surpassed, thus enabling consumers and users to access them directly in cheaper and easier ways. The model of the K-Economy The K-economy Model values people, information and relationships. The nucleus of the economy is one of vision-driven, situation-dependent and goals and action-oriented. Key characteristics are:   Mass customized solutions are favoured. Therefore, providing solutions are important skills, requiring teamwork and cooperation in real or virtual relationships among other organizations and people, which provide competitive advantage. Mass production and mass competition models are becoming less important.   Designs are made possible at each solution development, enabling people enrichment, since each level (product, process or supplier) are upgradeable, open ended, having information and services-rich content.   Adaptive economy and culture starts with valuing people, having marketing specialists, skilled employees, advance technological equipment, telecommunications overnight delivery, pre-qualified alliances, virtual corporation and regarding time as value creation