A heroine without a cape

Finally met Ms. Saw Ann Ping yesterday. My staff told me she was downstairs conducting training for our bank. We exchanged courtesy and talk about many things including world economy and also the local stock market. She asked me to “cerita”. So I said will after taking a photo with this “Iron Lady” ??.

Not many people will do what she do beyond dollar and cents. And I’ve always enjoyed reading her “rants” .... I mean story, which I found very enlightening with a twitch of hilarity, yet carrying valuable lessons we could all treasure from. She said she is older than me, but I got more white hair. But then I told her I had a staff who has less hair than me and yet younger than both of us. Oppps... sorry, no pun intended.

It is always a pleasure meeting up with someone who had found her purpose in life (I think). And I think if we have more people like her, convincing employers to take a chance of someone who the former wouldn’t even consider, and mentoring young graduates to polish their soft skills; Malaysia would be an even greater place to be in. I am where I am because someone out there (you know who you are ) open the door for me to switch my career and find my calling and purpose, despite coming from an engineering background (I was an engineer for almost 10 years mind you).

In this challenging economic climate, with geopolitical events lined up by protectionism and distrust, we had seen how dramatic events such as US-China Trade War had affected (and still affecting) the prospect of global economic growth and the spillover effect it had on trading nations like Malaysia. Economist all over had cut global economic forecasts for this year and next year. Our country is fortunate to have diversified economic activities that had helped to propel growth at 4.9%yoy in 2Q19, above market expectations and our forecast of 4.7%yoy and 4.8%yoy respectively. But will the good time last when our trading partners saw weakenng economic performance, affecting the demand of our exported products?

The last thing the country need is the growing distrust among its much celebrated diversified citizens. We need work together to propel Malaysia to greater heights. We need to get on the bandwagon of more complex economic activities that create greater economic dividends to our nation as well as providing ample high skilled jobs for its people. One key ingredient in this recipe is innovation. We need to work together towards "Building Our Collective Brain" - an apt title from the recent Khazanah Megatrends Forum. Professor Joseph Henrich of Harvard University in his special address at for forum said that the "larger collective brain makes us individually smarter", where "innovation is driven by the recombination of ideas fueled by interaction of diverse minds". To do this we need trust. His counterpart, Professor Nathan Nunn, added that "trust is particularly important....nearly all economic interactions, including innovation require some form of trust".

The recent Budget 2020, the last from the 11th Malaysia Plan template has numerous initiatives in supporting the Thrust 6 of the latter, which is "re-engineering economic growth for greater prosperity", where emphasis is given to accelerate economic growth, driven by high-value and knowledge-intensive activities. Small Medium Enterprises (SME) play a very important role here akin to the role of startups space made popular in the US and Europe, where collaborative brains created companies that dominated the world today such as Google. There is no stopping any malaysians regardless of background from creating such behemoth, but unity and trust has to be there so we could all concentrate of innovations rather than being worry about having to always look behind our back.

Bringing all these together. We need more "heroes/heroines" like Ms. Saw Ann Ping that put differences aside, to help fellow Malaysians to realise their potential, which they sometimes don't realise them having it. And also to effect positive changes in life of others, so the country could prosper and realise its potential as the Asian Tiger. We certainly have the right ingredients in place but we have got to make the collaborative brain recipe to work for us. Now let's make it happen!