‘We lack the will to invent products’

is a fact that, as a nation, we are very deft at using new technology, not creating or developing the technology.

There may be a few of our inventions that made it to the world stage, but by and large we lag behind many countries, including China, in innovations.

As one UTM professor put it, the country has failed to create innovators although the quality of our engineering education is on a par with those of top universities in the world.

The main reason is the country lacks the will to invent products, said the former dean of UTM’s Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Prof Sheikh Hussain Shaikh Salleh, who now lectures.

“Our curriculum is similar to what is being taught in top universities in Europe. Our syllabus is as good as the West,” he was quoted by a news portal as saying in an interview.

“But in the West, the students design and apply the knowledge learned. We buy products from the West for our engineering students to assemble.

“That is why after 60 years of independence, are there any new industries coming up? That’s because the engineers are not utilising the theories they have learned,” he said.

There are other fundamental issues beyond just the lack of willpower. Lack of access to funding and poor commercialisation are some of the factors.

The primary role of reseach agencies such as Mardi is equally important. Mardi, for example, used to have more than 600 researchers, churning out on the average 300 over products of inventive and innovative nature.

This means each researcher would take or need two years from their findings to come out with products.

Of these 300-odd stuff, only six per cent had really been taken up, produced on a large scale and commercialised.

We should really address the question of “where next” after innovation.

If there is an abundance of innovative products at the prototype stage, but no take-up and