Dr. Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist

Persaud

Irving Wladawsky-Berger is IBM's vice-president for technical strategy and innovation. He is also a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his activities, in part, centre on assisting students prepare for careers in services-based economy.

Years ago, before computer science appeared in universities' curricula and as degree options, IBM partnered with the likes of Columbia University to create programmes in this area.

Call it what you will - technological fore-sight, leading edge thinking, philan-thropy, enlightened self-interest - we're talking here about know-ledge creation, formalisa-tion and dissemination.

This process acts as a kind of express midwife to such know-ledge being embodied in repetitive processes in the mainstream economy. At the end of the day, this works to enhance productivity.

Meaning of services

In an interview published in the New York Times, Wladawsky-Berger argues that: "Information technology is becoming embedded in all aspects of business, society and our personal lives. We see an increasing requirement to apply technology, engineering and disciplined thinking and design to the people aspect of businesses. That's really what we mean by services. There are no universities that have had programs in applying technology to the people aspect of businesses. So once more we are working with universities around the world to help create this emerging discipline that we call services sciences."

IBM spends US$100 million a year on this initiative and is in one way or another connecting with the University of Cali-fornia Berkeley, Rens-selaer Polytechnic Institute, Georgia Tech, MIT, Oxford, Cam-bridge, and Tsinghua University in China, among others.

Its thrust is strategic and global.

Vivid results

IBM, I should add, is by no means alone. Services account for over 70 per cent of the economy in the OECD countries - United States, European Union, Japan. Obviously, productivity increases in these countries must come in services. This fact has not gone unnoticed.

In 2004, universities offering related educational and research programmes created the Council of Engineering Systems Universities (CESUN). The council includes more than 30 universities in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Literally, CESUN recognises and makes possible a new interdis-ciplinary field of endeavour. Here, the normal disciplinary barriers between the 'soft' social sciences and business/management and the 'hard' areas like physics and engineering are broken down.

The links allow system engineering, technology and policy, engineering management, innovation, entrepreneurship, system and decision analysis, operations research, manufacturing, product development and industrial engineering, all through collaborative effort, to benefit society.

Now I can literally feel the barbed, burning question coming at me. What on earth has all of this got to do with Jamaica? I can anticipate the tenor of comments: 'All these high sounding names, systems and operations research - we no ready fe all dat, tings no wuk so inna Jamaica!'

But, we are ready. Jamaica is not unique in scores of areas as many so often vehemently insist. Services make up a growing segment of the Jamaican economy too. And here's the real big thing. Services require not only knowledge activities, but also its generation and manipulation.

Innovation in the knowledge economy does not require huge expenditures in plant and equipment. The 'lack of funds' excuse is therefore unavailable to us. Spatial contiguity is unnecessary so 'the Jamaican market is too small' excuse is also unavailable to us. If the 'product' is used by one company, it does not disappear after being physically 'consumed'; it is not, through use, made unavailable to others.

These 'products' are what economists call non-rival. They can be used over and over again by whoever wishes to do so. This is the big difference between the new knowledge economy based on services and the old 'smokestack' economy based on physical manufacture as in sugar and bauxite.

Once that ship has left with its contents 'sold' to Alcan or Tate & Lyle, that's it. The revenue stream is dead. Not so for the 'product' of the knowledge-based economy in the IT age.

Any breakthrough, therefore, in this area of 'services sciences' can be made available to the world.

It is the mindset that has to change. Many of the challenges faced by Jamaican businesses will be identical to those of business everywhere. Some will be unique. And even those that are for the moment unique may well be replicated in the large group of so-called emerging market economies.

Surely there is room for healthy collaboration between wealth in the business and financial services sector and innovative wealth in our population harnessed by the institutions that can act as facilitators in such an enterprise.

wilbe65@yahoo.com