Professor Waguih ElMaraghy Ph.D., P.Eng, FCIRP, FASME, FCSME, FSME, FCAE, FEC
Association of Egyptian-American Scholars
Abstract:
Innovation coupled with industrial productivity is an important fact in what drives improvements to standards of living. Recent studies have found that investing in science and applied research leads to 10 to 30 times more economic growth than investment in physical capital. Disruptive innovation has proved to be a powerful way of thinking about innovation-driven growth. Disruptive innovation creates a new market and value network to eventually disrupt and displace inefficient or crony firms, products and alliances. Not all innovations are disruptive, even if they are revolutionary.
“Disruptive innovations are made possible because they get started in two types of markets that incumbents overlook. Low-end footholds exist because incumbents typically try to provide their most profitable and demanding customers with ever-improving products and services, and they pay less attention to less-demanding costumers. In fact, incumbents’ offerings often overshoot the performance requirements of the latter. This opens the door to a disrupter focused (at first) on providing those low- end customers with a “good enough” product” (Christensen CM et al., 2015). Hence, states need to invest in people and learning, helping citizens think and act in new and innovation ways, if we are to maintain our competitiveness well into this – and even into next millennium.
The key to the future is to invest in people, and in particular Egypt’s youth who are far more entrepreneurial than previous generations, rather just in technology, because it is people who create, innovation, and fuel the growth in the economic and technology sectors. Moreover, Momani (2015) notes there is an opportunity to propel Egypt’s youth because of “a fundamental intergenerational change” where Arab youth favor entrepreneurialism, political freedom and cosmopolitanism. Hence, technology is not the only innovator or disruptor, people can be if they are encouraged to do so with important policy changes that harness and accelerate creativity. Technology may be able to create, but it’s important to realize it is people who innovate and create. ElMaraghy W. and ElMaraghy H. (2014) emphasized that for companies to sustain in the future, they must also meet the continuous innovation requirements while producing environmentally friendly products and the socio-technical objectives, hence meeting a “quadruple bottom line”
This article was published in 3alamaltanmya
sponsored by Future Builders International Academy
Led by Dr.Maha Fouad
