Knowledge economy to mitigate negativity

Intellectual Property generation is key:

Ashan Kumar met Aravinda Dassanayake, Virtusa Technology Senior Engineer to see How IT Changed his life... Connect with the columnist on www.prwiresl.com/blog

If we go back in time, it is not hard to notice that this region of the world had all the knowledge repositories. Ample evidence of various explorers and monks visiting ancient Sri Lanka for the sole purpose of gaining knowledge on various aspects such as religion and philosophy.

By the end of colonialism the knowledge drifted off to the western world. But, nowadays there is a huge drive to regain that lost knowledge hub status. Concepts like Silk Route 2.0 are coming up and newer alliances are being created between nations of the region which were split apart for political reasons.

In this environment Sri Lanka can play a key role as a fast growing country which has much potential for formulating its own knowledge economy while continuing to flourish based on current economic drivers.

As an IT professional he stresses on the great augmentation IT can provide, where it can massively enhance a knowledge economy by providing some of the key driving factors to the concept. Information can be taken around the country and across the globe with great pace and richer in content allowing efficient production and better reach for everyone.

Faster connectivity, new paradigms of information sharing, knowledge management and media would allow a form of collective intelligence and let individuals query to specific knowledge accumulated within the country.

We know that when we compare Sri Lanka with the rest of the countries in the region, the communication infrastructure is pretty advance. The ability we have to channel information via these means is a definite plus we already have.

When it comes to the IT arena, having a knowledge economy would have a further motivation to go in to a product space from a service space which is necessary to create new knowledge and gain competitive advantage.

Sri Lankan youth

Commenting about the role of the youth young Aravinda, “I believe we have a better start than most countries in the region because our literacy rate is high and free education has given plenty of opportunities to individuals with talent.

Whether the opportunities are optimally used is a different discussion.

However, over the past there has been a tendency in the youth to be too attached to the open economy and focus on trading that would not have a significant impact on the country to prosper. A change I am envisioning is where the youth would give priority for education and aim at excelling in at least a focused field. Success will follow”.

He further added, “IT has a lot of potential as a field, but when it comes to a knowledge economy every field can have an abundance of opportunities and a better chance of ‘knowledge products’ to radiate.

If you really gain specialized knowledge, I don’t see why there should be a reason to hit the streets and demand for jobs or complain about the system. Everyone has a specialty which can be leveraged and try to be self sustainable after blending in some creativity.

There are many forms of new educational establishments coming up. I see this as an opportunity for the youth to enhance their knowledge and be more entrepreneurial and inventive rather than being a subject of the herd effect.

Being passionate about what they are doing it is going to be really important rather than trying to merely ‘qualify’ in IT because no matter how much of references are out there, when it comes to contributing to a knowledge economy you need to work with your brains and know your stuff at the best”.

Dreams of a child

Just like many other kids he too had the default set of ambitions like being a doctor, a pilot and soldier.

However, as he grew the idea of progressing in the medical field stood by him. “I had and still do have a passion to cure people. That motivated me to picture myself as a doctor someday in the future” he recalls.

This was influenced by his parents and relations who badly wanted to see him ending up the ‘doctor of the family’.

However, later on two strong blows struck against this idea and despite the passion he had for curing people he chose to move to engineering.

He was increasingly becoming interested in technology, and his father got him a computer. From then onwards his passion was totally on Engineering and ICT. “My spare time was spent playing with bits and bytes” Aravinda said.

Impact of IT

Working in IT means you are not a localized thinker anymore. Your way of thinking spans geographical boundaries and you start thinking in a global scale.

This is the most interesting transformation he noticed in himself.

He describes, “The main reason would be because no matter what differences maybe there in the resources, facilities and infrastructure, in the IT domain you play with the same toolset.

When you get into technical discussions you are in the same arena. This has made me more self confident because it is not so tough to work with the rest of the world although that is the stereotypical behaviour that has been assigned to our region of the world. That has interestingly made me exceedingly be very proud of my country and being a Sri Lankan”. At the same time, with the easy reach for the rest of the globe, the options for solutions have become wider as well.

Additionally, IT can make a person very practical and logical. It helps immensely to make the right decisions at the right time and also get rid of any conventional idiosyncrasies that would hinder progression.

Coping with the industry

The industry is probably the fastest evolving industry since new technologies are created every day. Constant learning and connection with tech blogs, newsletters, development communities etc. at the same time, you also should get rid of the mentality where you are trying to swim in the rugged ocean of IT and trying to survive.

As a part of the industry you also need to be part of the change. In order to do that you need to have your fundamentals right, because at the end of the day any new creation is done on existing components.

If you need to be influential in the evolving industry you need to have the caliber to inject your bit of creativity and imagination along with a solid footing on the implementation aspects as well.

There is no running away from the fact that this is a knowledge driven industry and you need to have your neurons running to sustain.

The good news is already certain. Sri Lankan IT organizations have taken the extra step to be part of this evolution and are in the process of creating global standards.

However, this alone is not enough. The model where you inject knowledge into the industry is one part of it. It might be beneficial from a knowledge perspective, but when it comes to playing the role of a vendor, probably how sophisticated your systems are in terms of technology might not be that important.

Time to market, cost of ownership and cost of change are ultimate parameters which decide the viability of an entity in the industry.

After incorporating that specialized knowledge then you need to take few additional steps to define the optimal processes, attract and retain the best brains for the job and also use all channels possible to penetrate in to markets and expand the footprints.

Future is IT

The benefits are twofold. One would be by all administrative areas and government entities of the country embracing IT and streamlining the operations.

The second would be to make IT a major contributor for a knowledge economy and create an abundance of employment opportunities around it.

Bringing in IT for Government offices can help make the processes extremely efficient. This would span all areas like public administration, transportation and military.

The good news is that a lot of work is happening in the e-Sri Lanka initiative and a significant number of services are moving to the web space via the ‘Lanka Gate’.

Keeping the momentum going and expanding to the remaining services would help immensely for other areas of the country to pick up speed. This has been long standing due to the fact that the IT literacy of the working population is comparatively low.

“But the more time we take to adapt, the country is getting hit. The drivers of the initiatives need to have the systems in place for at least the upcoming generation to pick up and continue, the number of employment opportunities is pretty obvious by now based on the points specified under the relevance of IT in a knowledge economy”. he pointed out.

IT education is going to go hand in hand with the rest of the developments. The theory based education in my opinion does not mesh well with IT.

A more practical oriented, team based and project based IT education would have a lot of advantages. I am not saying that classroom education should be totally eliminated. But, for a very practical domain like IT, it is best to learn as you go on. Young envisions a whole gamut of R&D happening in various areas such as AI, game development, machine vision, security etc.” In order to make our presence in the global IT arena we need to have a lot of IP generated within the country.

Having focused research centres covering different areas is something I would like to have one day. Who knows? If it turns out fine this could be the next Silicon Valley and those centres could be a bunch of Stanfords?”

Having a presence of IT is not just going to create opportunities and inspire individuals, but it is also going to bring much efficiency to the other industries in the area.