Earlier today, I was invited to attend the “DIGITAL ECONOMY WHITEBOOK LAUNCH” hosted by the EuroCham Singapore. One of the highlights of the event was a Fireside Chat with Minister Gan Kim Yong (Minister for Trade and Industry), moderated by Dr Lovneesh Chanana, Chair of the Digital Economy Committee.
While the entire conversation was very insightful and wide-ranging, there were a few things that I found extremely insightful shared by the minister.
I wanted to share the top 3 learning from the conversation with all of you:
Learning:
There seem to be no conversation these days without the mention of the impact of AI and what does that mean to the workforce, specifically older folks and those whose skills, learnt over a lifetime will just become irrelevant. When someone asked, what will you the Singapore government do with the citizens who either can’t learn new skills or don’t want to, the minister replied that all Singaporeans know that:
To Learn is To Live
– minister Gan Kim Yong
He was pretty confident that almost all Singaporeans understand the need to constantly be learning and also shared an example that his mother-in-law (80+ years old) still is learning. The Singapore government does take the reselling of its citizen very seriously and looks like they believe that their citizens do the same as well.
Another version of this quote that I have used for a long time is
Once Machines start to learn, they will never stop! Neither should we!!
– Mukesh GUpta
Ecosystems:
Another thing that captured my attention was his emphasis (multiple times) on the necessity to think in terms of ecosystems and not just as individual entities. I definitely believe that we all live in a complex adaptive system where everything is connected to everything else.
Specifically, when it comes to business, I also believe that we are now in a phase where the competition in the marketplace is not between individual organisations but amongst networks of organisations. I wrote about it a few years back, that you can read here.
So, when we are looking to innovate, drive digital transformation or efficiencies, we need to go beyond the boundaries of our organisations and include our suppliers, vendors and customers and everyone who is connected with us and who are part of our value network. This is when we can truly realise where the bottlenecks are and how we can overcome them to create outsized impact.
Sense Making:
The minister also shared his thoughts on the importance of the ability to make sense of the data that we collect from all the different sources (one of the best thought leader around sense making is Harold Jarche and you can listen to my conversation with him about sense making here)
When answering a question around the challenges of data integration, the minister shared his thinking about the importance of not allowing data to sit in silos and at the same time not allow it to lose its context.
However, once we got access to all the date, the key is in being able to make sense of all the data and use this to make good decisions and or solve specific challenges. He also shared how AI can actually help us in this sense making and help us be better as a result.
In conclusion:
In conclusion, all I can say is that having listened to the minister (this is the first time that I have had a direct interaction with a minister in any country, let alone Singapore), I think that Singapore is in good hands. Singaporeans should just
To Learn is To Live!!
