The best is yet to come…

by Lai Shu Wei – VP, Mass Market Marketing Operations, TM Berhad 

Yes, there’s a huge economy that resides in the internet.

We often refer to it as the digital businesses and e-economy and we make references to the Alibaba’s and Amazon’s of the World, associating them with the success stories of Ubers, AirBnb and an endless list of new admired players everyday.

We have great ambition to get into this space, to be a part of this growth, and get ourselves our fair share of this booming growth.

Welcome to Industry 4.0. We have the plans. We have the ambition. We have the interest and drive to succeed.

So let’s do it.

And as we strive towards competing with the rest of the world, let’s also remember the fundamental pillars we are building back home in Malaysia.

For example, we will still need to build more schools. Train more teachers. Build more roads to connect them. But it takes a while sometimes a generation later before we can start to see some of the results.

But we now have an opportunity to narrow that gap with access and technology. It’s not just about providing access to schools and people, but using access to bring together communities of people, to bring the best of knowledge offered across to everyone, using the digital environment to create virtual communities.

“While we wait for more schools to be build, more teachers to be trained, let’s not deny the children today of the best education. The student located furthest away somewhere in a remote village who commutes a few hours to get to school no longer is denied a great education when we connect them with the best teachers and classrooms throughout the country”.

It does not stop here.

We do this for every other pillar from welfare to minority groups. From medical requirements, to the prediction of outbreaks like dengue, flood and haze management to almost everything we do on a daily basis – they can all be incorporated into the same space where we leverage the close proximity of virtual communities.

This is the formula to get us back on the path towards becoming a developed Malaysia and a pioneer in the new economy to come.

To make this possible, the Communications and Multimedia  Ministry becomes the backbone and foundation to all others. We build the physicals and at the same time, we build the physicals virtually.

And we build this with entities that are able to bring together this virtual journey. No more fragmented initiatives. Time to stitch the best of what is out there into a seamless virtual journey.

We have all the ingredients. Now we need to be a bit imaginative and start bringing together the best of what is available.

And start focusing on the people, their journeys and opportunities.

It starts now.