Despite a lack of natural resources, economies like Japan, Taiwan, and Germany have reached high-income status. We attribute their success to smartness. Undoubtedly, all less developed countries aspire to keep driving economic growth to earn high-income status. As most of them are not blessed with rich natural resource deposits, they need to be smart. On the other hand, due to a lack of smartness, many natural resource-rich and labour-surplus less developed countries have yet to engineer sustained growth paths to reach high-income status. Besides, due to the lack of smartness, a few less developed countries have witnessed U-turns upon showing initial debt-driven development success. For the same reason, a few others are caught in a debt-ridden development trap. Hence, the development challenge has been to turn less developed countries smart so that they find sustained growth paths, irrespective of natural resource stock, connectivity, labour pool, domestic market size, geographical location, and student population.
For packaging and branding development programmes, newsworthy terminologies are being used. Notable such vocabularies are "sustainable", "digital" and "green". The recent one has been "smart". For example, Singapore has come up with a "Smart Nation" programme. The purpose of this Singapore government-initiated programme has been to harness infocomm technologies, networks, and big data to create tech-enabled solutions. Following this footstep, if a less developed country opts for borrowing and importing technologies for automation, will its citizens, government, economy, and society be smart? Upon turning to farming through artificial intelligence with imported technologies, how will farmers and graduates of agricultural academic programmes succeed in creating economic value with their knowledge and ideas?
Similarly, if automation or artificial intelligence takes over the role of public service delivery, what will the role of knowledge and ideas of government officials be? Likewise, if imported artificially intelligent actors take the role of factory managers and workers, healthcare professionals, and teachers, how will their citizens be smart? How can a country be smart by turning citizens ineligible for work due to the import of technology? Does it mean the agenda of making a less developed country smart should not be at the edge of technology? Of course not.
Despite having diverse connotations and indicators, the smartness of a nation refers to engineering a pathway for increasing economic value creation from its natural resources and human competencies so that per capita income, jobs, and wages keep rising while reducing wastage, debt, and environmental degradation. Hence, turning a less developed country smart is not about using labour proceeds to import high-end technologies for automating public service, farming, manufacturing, education, cities, and transportation. The focus of making a nation smart would be empowering citizens, the economy, and society to derive increasing economic value from its natural resources, labour, knowledge, and ideas. The shifting focus from borrowing and importing knowledge and ideas to saving and being a knowledge and idea exporter would lead to engineering a pathway of graduating to an intelligent nation. To begin the process of smart nation-building, here are seven areas for foundation building.
MAKING CITIZENS KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT WEALTH CREATION DYNAMICS: In this globally connected competitive market, wealth creation out of natural resources, labour, knowledge, and ideas depends on idea dynamics. Hence, citizens should have a good understanding of it so that acts of individuals and their government are in favour of idea creation, acquisition, accumulation, and transformation into wealth. Such an understanding is vital to be smart for comprehending the past, interpreting the present, and predicting the future so that they can prepare to maximise leveraging their natural resource, labour, knowledge, and ideas.
GRADUATING FROM IDEA IMPORTER TO EXPORTER: So far, less developed countries have been importing ideas in the form of development programmes, policies and technologies. Due to the growing role of ideas and their substituting role for natural resources, labour, and knowledge, economic growth out of imported ideas has been facing increasing limits. Hence, it's time to be smart and be an idea producer and exporter. No natural resource-poor country has reached high-income status through idea import. Besides, due to a lack of domestic idea competence, upon showing initial progress, many less developed countries are either caught in debt-ridden growth traps or experiencing U-turns.
GRADUATING FROM BORROWING TO SAVING-LED DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES: The borrowing-based development model has an easy way to show quick, visible results. Often, such borrowing-based projects are prescribed by lenders. So far, there has been no record that lender prescription has enabled any less developed country to reach high-income status-let alone sustain it. Besides, infrastructure projects through suppliers' credit impose significant restrictions on technology assimilation and advancement. Hence, to graduate to the status of a smart nation, the focus should be on a saving-based development model with the support of domestic idea excellence.
PREDICTING, STIMULATING, AND LEVERAGING CREATIVE WAVES OF DESTRUCTION: Due to the creative waves of destruction, existing means of economic value creation from natural resources, labour, knowledge, and ideas lose relevance. On the other hand, alternatives show up. Long-run economic waves are the outcome of creative waves of destruction. Sustaining and accelerating economic growth demands riding a rising wave. Those individuals, firms, and nations that can predict and stimulate creative waves of destruction for switching to higher effectiveness and efficiency will be sustaining prosperity.
SHARPENING INNATE ABILITIES FOR OUTPERFORMING AND INNOVATING MACHINES: Human beings have been progressing through scaling up innate abilities. The natural resource stock in a raw form has little value. We invent and innovate machines for deriving economic value from natural resources. Hence, machines are tools for creating wealth. However, imported machines have been substituting labour and knowledge of importing less developed countries. Hence, it's time for less developed countries to be smart by sharpening their innate abilities so that the comparative advantage gap between humans and machines keeps increasing. By scaling up innate knowledge discovery and idea invention abilities, they can advance machines further to graduate and become technology exporters.
WINNING GLOBAL INNOVATION RACE FOR CREATING WEALTH FROM IDEAS: For leveraging citizens' innate abilities of idea production, smartness is needed to scale up and win the global competition. Hence, smart measures are required to create a local market of ideas and improve it further to win the global innovation race.
LEVERAGING DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES FOR GRADUATING TO TECHNOLOGY EXPORTER: For less developed countries, development programmes, whether in the public service, infrastructure, education, or healthcare, are major windows for accessing state-of-the-art global technologies. Instead of limiting the focus on import and consumption, the focus should be on assimilating and advancing them to graduate and be technology exporters.
As explained, for a less developed country to be smart, the focus should change from the temptation of being bright and fresh in appearance with imported technologies. The journey of building a smart nation should embark on developing and pursuing an idea edge for increasing wealth from whatever the nation's resources are. Indeed, programmes showing quick-witted smartness through borrowing-based automation would not lead to empowering citizens to get high-income jobs--let alone propelling a less developed country to reach and sustain high-income status.
M. Rokonuzzaman, Ph.D is academic and researcher on technology, innovation, and policy.
zaman.rokon.bd@gmail.com