Session 6 Journal

In this session, we talked about what improvements technologies can bring to the field of healthcare, including diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, treatments and so on.

Although there are countless good news that bio-technologies can bring to us, there are also potential threatens to human beings. For example, with the wide usage of antibiotics, many kinds of microorganism have developed their resistibility to the antibiotics. If we cannot stop this, will there one day when some super-bacteria appear and we cannot find ways to protect ourselves from their attack?

From the SARS outbreak a few years ago, we know that there should be quick action and collaboration around the world to prevent such abrupt and terrible infectious diseases from totally out of our control and making huge harm. How to develop effective cure and medicine as soon as possible, and how to help control the spreading by using technologies? These need to be studied further.

I rate this session 7.5 since we mainly concentrate in bio-business and this is not enough for our topic----healthcare----a field which has such wide influence because it touches every single person of the world and a field with such close relationship to everyone.

Session 5 Journal

Brief Overview

In this session, we talk about the changes that ICT has brought to our world.

Interesting Observations and Ideas

One of the biggest differences and a cause of such kind of difference among people is the extent of access to ICT, which makes the difference of the informed and the not. As we are in an information era, information can divide the winners and the losers, the poor and the rich, and sometimes the survived and the dead.

Key Take Away Points

The development of an individual, a company and even a nation can be limited to a great extent if the person, company or nation doesn’t have access to necessary information. To develop affordable, convenient and wide access to ICT should be one of the tasks of the government.

Issues for Further Discussion

Although the access to internet has been developing at a very fast speed, one of the problems is that it cannot be develop further and deeper if some basic problems cannot be solved. Such problems include poverty, hunger and illiteracy. Unless people don’t have to face starvation every moment and that they have the ability to read, they will not be interested in and cannot benefit from the access to internet.

Another problem is that whether the development of internet will make some language and culture become dominant, while making some others extinct. Since most of the software programming and the information on the internet are in English, it’s hard for people speaking less used languages to make use of the internet if they don’t know English. Will this exacerbate the extinction of some languages and culture? Can it be solved by developing better translation software?

Personal ratings for Session

I rate this session 8 because the class discussions are inspiring.

Session 4 Journal

Brief Overview

The world is inevitably changing, but what changes will there be and what are the drivers of changes? How should we response to these changes? How do we manage change in order to gain long-term advantage?

To answer the above questions is the main concern of this session.

Interesting Observations and Ideas

Although technology has been one of the most powerful drivers of world changes, there are still a lot of crucial issues which technology can only help to a small extent. Such issues include poverty, hunger, terrorism and so on. Since the roots of the problems are not very much related to technology.

There are also a lot of issues which cannot be solved by market behaviors, since private sectors only want to go to places with least risk and best possible profits.

Key Take Away Points

The success of change management lies in the success of people management, which requires using right incentives to link individual career objectives to corporate goals.

Personal ratings for Session

I rate this session 7 because there are too much reading provided in this session and a few is not so excellent as before.

Session 3 Journal

Brief Overview
In this session, we mainly learned about the problem of sustainable development and innovation management.

The problem of sustainable development has seized the attention of many organizations and countries, especially developed countries. These organizations and countries have carried out a lot of research and plans to help solve the problem in different levels and aspects.

How to stimulate innovation and how to transfer innovation into practical use, for example, business value? This is the second problem we put our effort into in this session.

Issues for Further Discussion

A lot of developed countries have taken a lot of actions to achieve sustainable development. For example, the top 10 of the highest recycling rate countries are mainly from the EU. , and the rest are Japan and the USA.

However, a lot of developing countries are still struggling to raise the living standards of their people by developing manufacturing industries, which without serious laws, enough technologies and funds, will cause disastrous destruction of the environment. For example, it is estimated that one third of China’s emission is due to exports. For such countries, what should they do? How can they balance the economical development and environmental protection.

The environment of the earth is co-related, international collaboration is needed for the sustainable development for our human beings. But according to what we have known at the moment, such collaboration is apparently not enough among countries because of various concerns of different countries. How can we solve this problem?

Key Take Away Points

“Tragedy of the commons describes a dilemma in which multiple individuals acting individually in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared resource even when even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen.” (See reading 3 session a, page 36）

Interesting Observations and Ideas

Will such a thing happen or is it happening in our world on the problem of sustainable development? Are countries all acting in their own self-interest instead of sitting together to share the information and other resources needed to achieve a better home for our future generations?

How can we avoid or at least stop the “tragedy of the commons” from happening?

Personal ratings for Session

I rate this session 8.