High Income Economy equals Highly Focused Nation

The prime minister, Dato' Sri Najib have mentioned again and again that for Malaysia to achieve the vision of a developed nation by 2020, we must strive to become a high income economy. What is a high income economy? A high-income economy is defined by the World Bank as a country with a Gross National Income per capita of $11,906 or more in 2008.

By an analogy, if an average person who has a salary of RM3,000 to RM10,000 is considered a middle income, and RM10,000 and above is considered high income, what he should do in order to get that range of salary? Of course the first thing that he can thought of is to get back to school. A Master degree might get him there but a phd will definitely get him to that range. But this approach may take some time, and probably not cost effective.

Another option is some refocussing on his strength and skills. If he works now as an engineer, he still may be trap with that middle income, but by becoming a specialist engineer, he can get to that range. All that he needs is to focus on one niche area and be good at it. Malaysia can do the same. Look hard into what Malaysia is good at, focus very hard on it, be tremendously good at it and the global market will bend down to your knees and will forever be at your doorstep. Look as an example, Japan become a developed nation by focussing on automotive and electronics. Malaysia needs a niche area where the nation is already good at, focus all its resources to it, and become a specialist whereby all the global market recognise and will source it in Malaysia.

The Commonality Culture

The main objective of the creation of the internet is connectivity and information sharing. the ARPANET, the pioneer of the now world wide web was created just to do that..to solve the problem of how can one computer be connected to another computer and interchange information in realtime. From that simple objective, the internet has involved to what we are seeing today. Facebook, Twitter, blogger and other social networking are all created with one main reason; to connect everyone. Facebook now have 350 million users. Just imagine that. Even the population of Malaysia is 27 million. Facebook is a nation by its own and interconnecting the entire country and even regions.

So, what will happen if everyone is connected? You will start to have a commonalisation culture. A commonalisation culture whereby the issues discussed is the same, the information sharing is practically the same and even slangs and words are approaching towards commonality. I started to notice this when the news of MJ died. Everyone on facebook and twitter is talking the same thing and everyone gives their own personal view on the news. This would never happen 5 to 10 years ago. The same happens with the inauguration of Barrack Obama. Previously, the news are only shared one way.. For the first time in history of mankind, the news is shared two ways. You can get the main information plus also the side and less informal info on the same issue.

Is this commonality culture is good or bad? Only time will tell