Growing Beyond Talent
Keynote Address
by Mr. Lim Siong Guan,
Founding Chairman, Honour (Singapore) Limited
I
t was only a few weeks ago that the
Minister for Education announced
there would be fewer examinations. The
interesting question is: if we have fewer
examinations, what are we going to get
more of?
One answer is, hopefully, more of the
joy of learning. Rather than go into a
discussion on what “joy” means, I would
rather ask, what should students learn
more?
Obviously the learning has to be about
what would be useful for the students in
the future.
So, what would be useful for the
students?
Success for a VUCA World
I am sure that most of you are familiar
with the term “the VUCA world.” It is a
world that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex
and Ambiguous.
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While the future has always been volatile,
uncertain, complex, and ambiguous,
it has become increasingly so over
the past decade with the progress of
technology, and the rise of the digital
age and globalisation. Geopolitics today
is possibly the most volatile, uncertain,
complex and ambiguous factor of all.
‘VUCA” is a term that could make us feel
we know what we are talking about. But
perhaps it would be much nearer to the
truth if we acknowledge instead that we
know the future is about a VUCA world,
which means we don’t know what is the
future we are talking about.
Futurist Gerd Leonhard delivered a
keynote at a KPMG Robotic Innovations
event in 2015, titled: “The Digital
Transformation of Business and Society:
Challenges and Opportunities by 2020”.
Leonhard opined that we are at a point
in history where humanity will change
more in the next twenty years than in
the previous 300 years. There is thus an
urgent need to look into the future and
prepare for it— it is important to shift
from a focus on “what is”, to a focus on
“what could be”; a “wait and see” attitude
translates into a “wait and die” result, as
the question is no longer “what if ”, but
“what when”.
Anything that can be automated will
be automated. The acceleration of
automation has ethical implications…
but technology does not have ethics.
Technology can thus take two paths that
Leonard terms as “Hellven”, meaning a
situation where the technology can be
“heaven” (where technology is used to
increase the well-being of people) or
“hell” (where technology brings about
bad unintended consequences).
Leonhard also made the point that while
technology has progressed explosively,
humanity has only progressed linearly.
Whether this new world is heaven or
hell depends on whether humanity is
honoured and whether humanity has
honour.
Leonhard also opined that the
exponential and intersecting growth
of “Digitalisation, De-Materialisation,
Automation,
Virtualisation,
Optimisation,
Augmentation,
and
Robotisation” will result in inter-
dependency, job displacement, and
abundance that comes about due to
dramatic cost reduction.
In a world of abundance, there is too
much to use. But while there is a physical
manifestation of abundance outside,
there is a spiritual, emotional, and
mental scarcity inside, which sparks
individuals to search for what they feel
they lack, namely:
• Trust
• Experience
• Purpose
In addition, algorithms can only go so far.
In accordance with the economic laws
of demand and supply, as digitalisation
increases, anything that cannot be
made digital will become more valuable
– this means that people will seek more
creativity (which is great for the arts
industry and all of you here!) intuition,
love, trust, understanding, amongst
other values.
Honour in the experience economy
In the world of automation and
abundance, experience will become
extremely valuable. Hence, creativity,
innovation, social intelligence, and
customer focus will be very important
for businesses, and people will need
to develop skills in creative problem-
solving and constructive interaction if
they still want to be employed.
In the world of big data, the value of
the business will be contingent on the
human and non-digitalisable aspects
of a purpose-driven company, namely:
• Purpose
• Design
• Brand
What this means is that organisations,
communities and countries must not
only excel at technology, but also at
humanity.
What this means is that all of you – all of
us – have a very important role to play
in preparing your students and our
children for that future.
In a nutshell, to survive and succeed in
the future:
• We must honour our humanity.
• Organisations,
communities,
and countries must dare to think
differently and innovate to create
new value that cannot be easily
automated.
• We need stronger values, ethics,
standards, principles, and social
contracts.
• We need honour to honour these
stronger values, ethics, standards,
principles, and social contracts to
avoid hellish outcomes.
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