We Must Try Harder

On the first week of July, Tun posted an entry on Che Det, urging Malaysians to support local inventors and innovators by investing more capital and confidence into these local projects - as neatly summarized in his last paragraph:

The Government, the civil servants, the business community need to change their mindsets if Malaysia is serious about research and development.

According to him, most of us make up excuses not to invest into our local inventors and innovators, and feeling frustrated, some of these local inventors came to see him to demonstrate their products.

As I have said in my reply to that post, we must first understand that inventions and innovations get turned down everyday all around the world. That means, we in Malaysia are not unique in the response of our society to new products of invention. Below is a video about Google Wave (an ambitious project by Google to replace the traditional email system):

You can see how promising this new technology, Google Wave really is. And I wonder, why are we still not using it by now? (Note: I was very optimistic about Google Wave, and I'm quite disappointed that it is still not in practical use) This is only one of the many examples of failed inventions in the West.

Did you know that the British Royal Navy in mid-nineteenth century was once appalled by the advent of steam and also ignored the invention of the telegraph? Of course, it turned out that these two technologies, along with several others were the fuel of their rise to power.

So instead of blaming our mindsets for the failure of our local invention and innovation, we must encourage our inventors and innovators to never lose faith and try harder to develop their products and market them. They must have a strong heart in order to succeed, in a spirit of determination popularized by Thomas Edison when he said:

I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work

Of course, it is much easier for me to quote somebody than to actually do all the research work and develop new technology. But I strongly believe that we can go further than just repeating cliches about Malaysians denigrating all things Malaysian. This is a myth, I think.

Above all, we are no different from the people in America, Britain, Germany, Japan, China, Korea, Singapore, Africa, and everywhere else around the world. If something is good, practical and useful, it doesn't matter if it's American, British, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese or Malaysian, every intelligent person in the world would like to have it.