With 2021 still young, and hope in the air thanks to new COVID-19 vaccines and a new occupant in the White House, we can finally stop covering our eyes in horror and peer furtively into the future. As the decade unfolds, which countries are likely to be the biggest economic success stories?
Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has arrived with a suite of ambitious policy ideas, including plans to digitise government services and revive the country’s regional banks. But he has yet to come up with an overarching theme that strikes a chord with the public.
Technological advancements and artificial intelligence (AI) are revolutionising manufacturing for industries around the world. The International Federation of Robotics estimates that the global stock of operational industrial robots would have increased to 3,053,000 units by 2020, with the capability to help produce cars, electronics and new machinery. However, the scale and pace of AI in disrupting jobs is a concern and automation may work to widen the existing gaps in work
Malaysian universities will be revelling in their rise up the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University Rankings: Asia after five of the country’s institutes of higher learning cemented their places in the top-50.The country’s oldest university, Universiti Malaya climbed five places in the latest rankings and is now tied with the University of Tokyo at 13th – its highest position to date in a list which has been published annually since 2004.The other Malaysian universities in the top-50 inc
Technological advancements and artificial intelligence (AI) are revolutionising manufacturing for industries around the world.
Social institutions such as education, healthcare and public housing services play a key part in a country’s soft infrastructure. Apart from roads, bridges, airports and other hard infrastructure projects needed to sustain growth across the region, soft infrastructure initiatives are just as crucial in developing knowledge, innovation and technical know-how.As a whole, the region has prospered over the past two decades with the “manufacturing for export” strategy as the main pillar i
Creating new products, processes and ideas, innovators are at the forefront of development and progress. Be it a corner-shop or a multinational company, businesses that innovate are able to attract the best talent, increase revenues, scale up more efficiently and grab bigger shares of their respective markets.The best innovators are able to capture a niche market and help their brand stand out by meeting their customers’ ever-changing needs – key to any business’ longevity.
When resources are limited, it is human capital that defines the sustainable development of a community, especially in the case of costly misallocation and underutilisation, as is often the case in developing countries.
Education policies are a vital function in transforming the education landscape and configuring the learning outcomes of any nation. A prominent feature of a successful educational transformation is that it’s guided by a clear goal or vision. This would ideally be implemented through coherent planning, micro-management and a constant monitoring process.
Since the early 2000s, the Philippines added more than a million jobs as foreign companies outsourced customer support and sales tasks to the Southeast Asian nation.Now a looming wave of automation is threatening employment at call centres and forcing the industry to retrain workers to meet the demand for higher skilled jobs in areas such as healthcare, banking, finance and insurance.“The biggest challenge is people,” Jojo Uligan, president of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines
