New drive for creative thinking
Sunday, 23 August 2009
Christian Oliver
Five weeks before a February visit from Lee Myung-bak, South Korea's president, the head of the country's leading scientific university set his engineers a race against the clock.
Suh Nam-pyo, president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Kaist), had long been toying with the idea of a revolutionary electric vehicle that would take its power from cables beneath the road rather than relying on batteries. "Could you possibly build one?" he asked the boffins.
Somewhat timidly, they said they would look into it. Then, with the type of Korean tenacity that helped turn a country devastated by war into an Asian tiger, they worked day and night to ensure Mr Lee could be driven round the Kaist campus in a vehicle the world had never seen.
No one who knows Korea could be surprised that the engineers achieved their production target. It is the step towards "blue sky" inventions that is the more eye-opening, in a country that has long suffered a dismal reputation for ripping off ideas from others.
Throughout its industrial boom, many Japanese engineers cleared their debts by selling trade secrets on weekend visits to Seoul. Those days are over but Korea has still found innovative "killer products" elusive.
"Korea can make the transition, going from improving and changing what other people designed to creating things nobody ever dreamed of before," says Mr Suh, a 73-year-old graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mr Suh identified Mr Lee as an important ally in his battle to revolutionise Korea's economic model as soon as the president stepped out of the passenger seat of Olev (the online electric vehicle). The university was also keen to promote another project: mobile harbours, an idea that the scientists believe has the potential to transform the world's transport networks.
The timing of the two men's meeting could not have been better. At the end of last year, Korea's government found itself in a period of soul-searching over whether the old economic model of grimy heavy industry and unwieldy conglomerates was sustainable in its competition for business with booming China.
Mr Lee publicly stressed the need for "new green growth engines" but it was hard to see many of the schemes as anything more than rhetoric or political gambits. But Mr Suh's ideas - and his ability to get them built - have inspired the president to experiment with an intriguing model for nurturing innovation.
The government pumped Won50bn ($40m, €28m, £24m), a large sum for a university, directly into Kaist so it could develop more models both of the electric vehicles and mobile harbours. The Korean vehicles challenge the dominant presumption in the auto industry that electric cars should use batteries. The Kaist model argues that world supplies of lithium are too scarce for mass production of lithium-ion batteries and that the batteries themselves are too heavy for practical purposes.
Instead, the cars should suck up power from the road in a process similar to how an electric toothbrush charges in its holder. Kaist's research suggests that two nuclear power stations could provide enough energy to run 6.0m cars, cutting the need for 35m barrels of annual crude oil imports.
As soon as Kaist produced the prototypes, some of the big names in Korean business, including Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Bus, expressed a strong interest.
The mobile harbours could dramatically change the world's shipping lanes, reducing the need for huge container ships to dock in deep-water ports to be unloaded. Instead, the shipping lanes could be designed to accommodate shallow-water ports that would send floating quaysides out to the cargo ships.
But two good ideas do not change a country. Mr Suh, who is both candid and thoughtful, argues that the key to turning Korea into a more innovative nation lies in reform of an academic system based on rote learning.
He has enacted ambitious reforms at Kaist, such as instigating rigorous interviews. "I want to see how they really think, to see whether we have a diamond or just shiny zirconium," he says.
Mr Lee is calling for other universities to follow suit in pursuit of the new economic model. However, he faces resistance from educational institutions. Korea's education system is surrounded by a powerful industry of night-schools and crammers that make their living by persuading parents they can drill children to get them into university.
Many parents feel they are being held hostage by the system. Educational costs have been identified as one of the main reasons that family savings are expected to fall to about 3.0 per cent of income from about 25 per cent at the end of the 1980s. Mr Lee sees this expenditure as a festering source of bitterness in the electorate.
Mr Suh, meanwhile, says he is introducing courses that encourage students to think globally about problems and not limit themselves to one field of engineering.
"As these projects have gone on, I see that leaders who can see the big picture are more supportive. People who work specifically on cars or ships have more trouble visualising things," he says.
No one imagines the electric car or mobile harbour plans will be free of technical and commercial challenges but Mr Suh stresses that the most important factor is a shift in the Korean mindset. "What I am arguing is: try 10 projects and one that is successful will pay for all the others," he says.
Seoul and the resort island of Jeju have asked for electric buses and Mr Suh says that the US territory of Puerto Rico has shown interest in developing the first mobile harbours.
Other academics, however, argue that the projects will not come to anything - saying there is a danger of electric shocks and that balancing the harbours in choppy seas will be impractical. Mr Suh insists the vehicles are safe and that problems of balance will be surmounted. He puts the criticism down to a simple fear of the unknown.
"What we are doing has never been done before," he says.
FT Syndication Service
Five weeks before a February visit from Lee Myung-bak, South Korea's president, the head of the country's leading scientific university set his engineers a race against the clock.
Suh Nam-pyo, president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Kaist), had long been toying with the idea of a revolutionary electric vehicle that would take its power from cables beneath the road rather than relying on batteries. "Could you possibly build one?" he asked the boffins.
Somewhat timidly, they said they would look into it. Then, with the type of Korean tenacity that helped turn a country devastated by war into an Asian tiger, they worked day and night to ensure Mr Lee could be driven round the Kaist campus in a vehicle the world had never seen.
No one who knows Korea could be surprised that the engineers achieved their production target. It is the step towards "blue sky" inventions that is the more eye-opening, in a country that has long suffered a dismal reputation for ripping off ideas from others.
Throughout its industrial boom, many Japanese engineers cleared their debts by selling trade secrets on weekend visits to Seoul. Those days are over but Korea has still found innovative "killer products" elusive.
"Korea can make the transition, going from improving and changing what other people designed to creating things nobody ever dreamed of before," says Mr Suh, a 73-year-old graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mr Suh identified Mr Lee as an important ally in his battle to revolutionise Korea's economic model as soon as the president stepped out of the passenger seat of Olev (the online electric vehicle). The university was also keen to promote another project: mobile harbours, an idea that the scientists believe has the potential to transform the world's transport networks.
The timing of the two men's meeting could not have been better. At the end of last year, Korea's government found itself in a period of soul-searching over whether the old economic model of grimy heavy industry and unwieldy conglomerates was sustainable in its competition for business with booming China.
Mr Lee publicly stressed the need for "new green growth engines" but it was hard to see many of the schemes as anything more than rhetoric or political gambits. But Mr Suh's ideas - and his ability to get them built - have inspired the president to experiment with an intriguing model for nurturing innovation.
The government pumped Won50bn ($40m, €28m, £24m), a large sum for a university, directly into Kaist so it could develop more models both of the electric vehicles and mobile harbours. The Korean vehicles challenge the dominant presumption in the auto industry that electric cars should use batteries. The Kaist model argues that world supplies of lithium are too scarce for mass production of lithium-ion batteries and that the batteries themselves are too heavy for practical purposes.
Instead, the cars should suck up power from the road in a process similar to how an electric toothbrush charges in its holder. Kaist's research suggests that two nuclear power stations could provide enough energy to run 6.0m cars, cutting the need for 35m barrels of annual crude oil imports.
As soon as Kaist produced the prototypes, some of the big names in Korean business, including Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Bus, expressed a strong interest.
The mobile harbours could dramatically change the world's shipping lanes, reducing the need for huge container ships to dock in deep-water ports to be unloaded. Instead, the shipping lanes could be designed to accommodate shallow-water ports that would send floating quaysides out to the cargo ships.
But two good ideas do not change a country. Mr Suh, who is both candid and thoughtful, argues that the key to turning Korea into a more innovative nation lies in reform of an academic system based on rote learning.
He has enacted ambitious reforms at Kaist, such as instigating rigorous interviews. "I want to see how they really think, to see whether we have a diamond or just shiny zirconium," he says.
Mr Lee is calling for other universities to follow suit in pursuit of the new economic model. However, he faces resistance from educational institutions. Korea's education system is surrounded by a powerful industry of night-schools and crammers that make their living by persuading parents they can drill children to get them into university.
Many parents feel they are being held hostage by the system. Educational costs have been identified as one of the main reasons that family savings are expected to fall to about 3.0 per cent of income from about 25 per cent at the end of the 1980s. Mr Lee sees this expenditure as a festering source of bitterness in the electorate.
Mr Suh, meanwhile, says he is introducing courses that encourage students to think globally about problems and not limit themselves to one field of engineering.
"As these projects have gone on, I see that leaders who can see the big picture are more supportive. People who work specifically on cars or ships have more trouble visualising things," he says.
No one imagines the electric car or mobile harbour plans will be free of technical and commercial challenges but Mr Suh stresses that the most important factor is a shift in the Korean mindset. "What I am arguing is: try 10 projects and one that is successful will pay for all the others," he says.
Seoul and the resort island of Jeju have asked for electric buses and Mr Suh says that the US territory of Puerto Rico has shown interest in developing the first mobile harbours.
Other academics, however, argue that the projects will not come to anything - saying there is a danger of electric shocks and that balancing the harbours in choppy seas will be impractical. Mr Suh insists the vehicles are safe and that problems of balance will be surmounted. He puts the criticism down to a simple fear of the unknown.
"What we are doing has never been done before," he says.
FT Syndication Service