i-Witness
Archive of my fortnightly column in Malaysian Business since 2001. Unedited version.

• The devils called Patent & FTA
  

  Will innovation and IPR suffer if technology is patented?

  
  June 1, 2006

  What do you see when countries negotiate in the bilateral and multi-lateral trade agreements? I see perpetual catching-up in economic divides if we are not careful when dealing with issues that involve patents, copyrights and intellectual property rights.

  That said, it’s quite disturbing to hear that Malaysia will pass the Patents Act (Amendment) Bill as the country has decided to accede to the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT) by the end of 2006.

  As it is, apart from the PCT, Malaysia is also acceding to three additional treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), namely the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT), the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) and the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Micro-organisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure, or in short, the Budapest Treaty.

  Patents can be easily related to escalated costs in building quality of life, and there is sufficient evidence to support this argument, with patented medicines as a solid example. Patented anti-retrovirals administered on AIDS patients used to be US$15,000 per patient per year. The generic versions, which are just as safe and effective, are US$150 per patient per year.
  

• From e-Filing to e-Flying
  

  Technology is meant to improve life, not to aggravate it

  
  May 16, 2006

  How did you file your income tax returns this year, by manual submission or e-Filing? Let me tell you this, I tried e-Filing. I gave up, and returned to paper submission.

  Despite the hype, the Inland Revenue Board just isn’t ready with the electronic tax returns processes. My benchmark is the electronic visa application process employed by the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, which has a similar methodology. You need Internet connection, filling of electronic forms and final output in PDF. It’s done in a jiffy, as all information submitted electronically will be verified with the government’s backend databases. In contrast, our IRB is half-baked with their processes, with loopholes in between.
  

• Keng Yaik’s legacy?
  

  Broadband penetration, local content, and liberalising telco industry

  
  May 1, 2006

  Before becoming the Minister of Energy, Water and Communication in 2004, Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik manned fort as the Minister for Primary Industries. His tenure took him through the rigorous period of massive development during the late 1980’s and the doldrums of the Asian Financial Crisis. It was his mettle in the palm oil industry that has unquestionably helped ascertain Malaysia’s continued foreign exchange income during those stormy years of the late 1990s. Despite the extended economic gloom, palm oil outshined other commodities in export revenue and provided the country much shelter in managing its fiscal shortfall that seriously impacted the neighbouring countries.

  However, sitting in his new ministry where water, energy and communications industries are housed in one, his responsibility tripled. Leaving energy and water industries aside, to what extent is he going to leave behind a legacy that equalled his days spent in primary industries?

  Currently, he has a plateful of unresolved issues. Fast-track broadband penetration; propelling the development of content to make broadband pervasiveness relevant; mobile-number portability; faster broadband speeds, operators’ lukewarm response to the registration of prepaid cellular service users. All are in a deadlock. How are to further liberalise the telecommunications industry when the telcos continued to resist the country’s public policies?

• Blue Ocean Strategy
  

  When beating competitors simply means making them irrelevant

  
  April 16, 2006

  When big corporations as diverse as Nintendo and Cirque du Soleil are adopting ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ in their marketing campaigns, you better watch out. Smart CEOs around the world are having a new book for their bedtime reading.

  The book is titled: ‘BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant’ co-authored by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (Harvard Business School Press, 2005). It deals with new approaches to tackle competition in the market place.

  

  In the book, the authors use the ocean as a metaphor to describe the competitive space in which an organisation chooses to swim. Red oceans refer to the frequently accessed market spaces where the products are well-defined, competitors are known and competition is based on price, product quality and service. In other words, red oceans are an old paradigm that represents all the industries in existence today.

  In contrast, the blue oceans denote an environment where products are not yet well-defined, competitors are not structured and the market is relatively unknown. Companies that sail in the blue oceans are those adept at beating the competition by focussing on developing compelling value innovations that create uncontested market space.

  Kim and Mauborgne’s book is based on a study of 150 strategic moves that spanned more than a hundred years (1880 – 2000) and thirty industries. Ther authors argue that tomorrow’s leading companies will succeed not by battling competitors, but by making strategic moves which they call “value innovation”. It’s a grand design to create powerful leaps in value for both the firm and its buyers, unleashing new demand, thus rendering rivals obsolete.

• Someone will eat your lunch
  

  Beware of Tim O’Reilly, Web 2.0, IE7, and broadband mobile devices.

  
  April 1, 2006

  There is absolutely no Internet surfer experience without a browser. But why did Microsoft, which professed to dominate in Internet-enabled applications as its core business, take browser so lightly that it had allowed Internet Explorer (IE) to age for the last five years without fundamental upgrades?
  
  Many a Microsoft detractor views the software giant as a business strategist good at knocking off emerging competitors. Some believe Microsoft allows nimble players to R&D new applications, but it will not hesitate to move in to eat their lunch if situations warrant it.

  You remember when Microsoft was an industry joke when it launched Internet Explorer 1.0 in August 1995? People thought Netscape was a better product for web browsing. Microsoft worked hard for six years to gain dominance in the browser war, and IE6.0 was finally introduced in October 2001, though still full of bugs. But IE6.0 was epoch-making as it effectively resulted in the premature retirement of Netscape, and Internet visionary Jim Barksdale. The web browser became but a conquered territory.

• Convergence in Digital Lifestyle
  

  Brands and service providers should look beyond network access

  March 16, 2006

  
  There is a distinct differentiation between multimedia and network service providers in the developing and developed countries. While both blocs continue to have under-served areas within their respective countries, the former keep their sight on rolling out telecommunications infrastructure, and the latter focus on providing solutions to emerging communication needs, which see a rapid change in digital lifestyle.

  The business case behind this lifestyle change is the convergence of information and communications technologies. Leading brands in the world, the First World to be exact, have been swift in tapping into this emerging trend, and come out with new gadgetries, applications and lifestyle solutions to excite and humour the digital generation. Some of these big names form strategic alliances to tap into each other’s strengths and dominance in the life of their respective end-users. Novelty, an oft-tried and perishable form of trapping customer loyalty, has been rudely replaced by old paradigms honey-coated with new flavours. Buzzwords: Mobility, Innovation, and Day-to-Day Problem-solving.

  For most of us in the productive generation, we are living in a world signified by Blackberry, 3G, blogs and Google search. Our lifestyle has become an undetachable part of the big rat-race. We need information on the tap to make informed decisions in business and in privacy, incessantly. Solving day-to-day problems and myriad challenges, both in the office and at home, is now a lifestyle by itself. So much for digital generation, you may say.