HEAD of the Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology (IAST), Dr. Suresh Narine, sought to woo investment in indigenously developed technology when the IAST held an engagement with the private sector on Thursday last. According to its website, the IAST “is an industrial research organisation which has as its mandate the development and/or adaptation of appropriate technology for the utilisation of Guyana’s natural resources, so that these resources can be gainfully developed and exploited for the benefit of the people of Guyana.”

Explaining the purpose of the engagement, Dr Narine said the IAST was seeking stakeholders’ input while it consolidates its research portfolio. “If you’re in my business, it is very easy to fall in love with projects that go nowhere, and it becomes a very effective tool if we can objectively kill projects,” he said, adding: “Rather than show you (private sector representatives) what we do and have, and you say, ‘Well, you know, I am interested in this’, or ‘I’m not interested in this’, I wanna talk about possibilities and capabilities, because we can become much more effective at servicing the private sector if we know what the private sector wants.”

Benefits
In his presentation, titled “Manufacturing Innovation: Where Can I Buy a Roadmap”, Dr Narine, who is a professor at Trent University in Canada, highlighted the significance of innovation to businesses and to the economy as a whole. He emphasised the need for the economy to be diversified away from its current commodities-oriented production structure, and said that Guyana still relies heavily on receipts from gold and bauxite mining, as well as sugar and rice cultivation.

Calling commodities production a “race to the bottom”, he noted that since the most successful commodities-producing economies are those that can produce at the lowest possible cost, they are often characterized by low wage levels, labour exploitation, and environmental degradation.

Turning to businesses, Dr Narine explained that if businesses are to remain viable, they need to invest in budding, potentially “invasive” technologies, as their current production technologies will eventually mature and become obsolete.

Illustrating this point, he noted that floppy disk manufacturers were booted out of business after the optical disc, which when initially developed was used by only a few tech-savvy early adopters, took off in popularity.

Role
Dr Narine, a Co-Chairman on oil and gas explorer CGX’s Board of Directors, acknowledged, though, that managers are more concerned about more pressing responsibilities, such as maintaining cash flows, monitoring sales, and overseeing other day-to-day activities, than investing in new technologies.

“You are busy with the business of doing business; and if you are not, you get fired pretty fast,” he conceded in his address to the managers in attendance, adding: “You don’t have time to mess around with things (new technologies) that are out there.”

The IAST head posited that, even in developed economies, large companies such as IBM acquire new technologies by buying startup companies rather than by innovating from scratch.

Dr Narine posited that the IAST can play a role in solving what he termed the “innovator’s dilemma”. That is, when by being innovative in current processes, businesses preclude the ability to be innovative in new technologies. “We (the IAST) can be the dreamer, we can be the people looking at those invasive technologies, and we want to become a shopping place for you,” Dr Narine stressed.

The exercise concluded with a tour of the IAST facilities, to view developments in progress. “We want to have these engagements every six months,” Dr Narine concluded.