Technology progression transforms society, enabling us to get our job done better at less cost, while offering us increasing comfort. This is the underpinning of the continued prosperity. But such a transformation is often mired of uncertainty and painful change, and also poses a threat to growing inequality and insecurity. Such a reality demands the necessity of shaping the transformation for maximizing gain for both consumers and producers alike, lowering the risk for entrepreneurs, increasing predictability, and enhancing net benefits for the society. Most importantly, we would like to figure out the opportunity for developing countries to add value to the technology-led transformation of the global society through ideas and succeed to trade such ideas in the competitive market, consequentially leading to opening the endless frontier of growth through ideas, as opposed to facing barrier due to relying on only labor, raw materials, and capital.
The breath, depth, and direction of transformation are influenced by policies, rational decision-making capability in the midst of uncertainty, ability to manage risk, and also culture. Moreover, there is no natural correlation between well-accepted indicators like R&D investments, publications, patents, STEM graduates, creativity, and profitable exploitation of intellectual assets. Although technology innovation driving the transformation is perceived as a random phenomenon, often termed as the magical acts of creative genius, but there appears to be certain patterns. Detection of these patterns helps us interpret the past, comprehend the present, and predict the likely future along with better clarity about relations among underlying factors.
The mission of The WAVES has been to provide an in-depth analysis of the past and present dynamics of technology innovation to develop the foundation for predicting the unfolding future, so that we can respond appropriately to cope with as well as leverage unfolding opportunities and challenges–for making the technology-led transformation of the society more predictable and less painful, offering more secured, inclusive and equitable sustainable growth opportunities.
