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Commencement Address to the 2011

Graduating Class of the Vector Technology

Institute

December 11th, 2011

Silburn Clarke, FRICS

President,

Jamaica Computer Society

Master of Ceremonies, Chairman and Members of

the Board of Vector Technology Institute, Members

of the Faculty, Technical and Administration arms of

the Institute, Graduands of the Class of 2011, both

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those present here this evening but also to those

who are not here physically but here in spirit,

parents, guardians, family, friends, well-wishers,

other distinguished ladies and gentlemen, Good

Evening.

I bring you fraternal greetings from the Governing

Council and members of the Jamaica Computer

Society; and I pause to recognise Mr Rohan Morris a

Council member present here today and a member

of your adjunct faculty

It is indeed an honour for me to join you on this

historic December 2011 evening as you make the

memorable transition from graduands to graduates.

This day will forever live in all our memories.

It will live in our memories as it marks a coming of

age from many angles and dimensions. It

represents a major transition. It marks a rite of

passage. It is also a significant jump over the

threshold as far as the Jamaican educational sector is

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concerned and will be recorded in the annals of this

period.

For the graduands, it represents proof-positive that

ambition, passion, hard work, tenacity, stick-to-

itiveness, creativity and perseverance does bring rich

dividends.

For the institute, it also is proof-positive that vision,

innovation, persistence, energy and prayer does pay

off.

We are extremely proud of you both on this lovely

and historic Sunday evening.

But in many ways, in the words of a famous song,

“you’ve only just begun” or in the Jamaican parlance

“this is just the kata, for the load is yet to come”

I am particularly honoured to be part of this

Commencement Ceremony as it marks the first time

that you will be unveiling the products of your

pioneering BSc programmes to the world.

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Let me on behalf of the JCS congratulate the Vector

Technology Institute on achieving this fantastic

historic milestone and join in applauding you, your

team and your students for this stellar achievement.

I salute the graduands of the Associate Degree,

Diploma programme and the special sole graduand

of the Certificate programme

For many of you, the experiences over the years of

your educational journey would have been bitter-

sweet. We know this as we have all been there at

some point or the other. While it would have caused

a lot of self-induced stress; psychologically,

physically, emotionally and financially, it would also

have opened up your appetite for more. Many

today may be thinking that “this is it” and “no

more”, “no ma”s , but trust me when I say that

there will be more. Its the nature of the beast.

We will willingly go through this “punishment”

because we have now realised that we have not fully

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stretched nor exhausted our own capabilities, we

have more in us and because we are ambitious, we

will soon recognise that there continues to be a

vacuum still to be filled and we willingly continue to

undergo self-improvement...as in the words of a

physicist “nature abhors a vacuum”.

Personally, I am a strong believer in lifelong

learning. In the world that we are living in today we

cannot but be committed to lifelong learning as the

stock of knowledge which we have filled up with to

date, always have to be constantly replenished in

order to continue to give us a marketable advantage.

Passage through the Academy is part of how we are

socialised to succeed in the wider society. I am

sure that you would not be surprised to learn that

while exam-taking is of great importance over your

academic journey, equally important were the many

other life-skills that you have added to your stock of

knowledge , understanding and competence. Your

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passage through the Academy built teamwork skills,

tolerance, an appreciation for grounding your

decisions in data and facts, in building empathy to

others, for understanding intergenerational

processes, for building your confidence as individuals

to take on big challenges from wherever they may

emerge, whether home or abroad, for re-enforcing

your self-esteem, for building assertiveness and for

confirming that prayer works. The underlying first

principles of much of what you have learned will

stay with you forever, but a lot of the technical

operationalisation of products built on those basic

principles will change over your future. It will

change because, even as we gather and speak here

today, innovators all over the globe are busily at

work trying and succeeding in changing and

reshaping the materialisation of technology. In the

business literature, we call it “creative destruction”

after an Austrian economist from the early part of

the 20th Century, Josef Schumpeter. Latterly the

phenomena have also been termed “disruptive

innovation” by Clay Christensen of Harvard Business

School.

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I want to share a little bit of some of what we have

been doing in the Jamaica Computer Society and

also take the time-out to invite you to make it your

professional home.

For the last two years we have embarked on a

process aimed at creating a better understanding

and overstandings of the role of Jamaican ICT

professional in his or her environment. And I must

pause to explain my reference to “overstanding”. A

friend of mine Prof Freddie Hickling, world

renowned psychologist and psychiatrist, makes a

clear distinction between understanding and

overstanding. He equates understanding to

knowledge, but opines that knowledge is necessary

but not sufficient for one as an individual to

contribute full value to problem-solving. To rise to

your highest and best level of contribution, you need

insight. This insight he terms “overstanding” ; a

term which he has borrowed liberally from the

Rastafarians.

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Let me share a little bit on some notions from the

realm of business but which I find to be very relevant

to individuals as well. Its a principle called the VRIO

principle and speaks to how we build competitive

advantage in firms and avoid both comparative

parity and also temporary competitive advantage.

The theory of the Resource Based View (RBV)

identifies the combination of Valuable, Rare, Non-

inimitable , and Organisation (VRIO) resources and

capabilities as the source of modern firm

competition.

Valuable resources and capabilities in a firm only gives

competitive parity

Valuable and Rare resources and capabilities only

gives temporary competitive advantage.

However where resources are valuable, rare, non-

inimitable and where the organisation has ways of

operating that are intangibly embedded within the

firm, then it’s hard for competitors to succeed and the

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firm therefore enjoys a sustained competitive

advantage.

Similarly if we transfer this analogy to the individual;

a. where you as an individual have knowledge, skills

and abilities that are valuable only (ie we can

monetise by selling and trading them in a market ) ,

then you would have achieved comparative parity.

So if we have 10 psychiatrists who have newly

minted medical degrees in a market short of doctors

then they will all be able to exchange their

knowledge, skills and ability for money in the

market. That’s value exchange but at the

comparative parity level

b. Where the individual, manage to acquire a rare skill,

lets say clinical psychiatry, then you will temporarily

lock that market until other specialists enter that

space; but until then you would have therefore

created a temporary competitive advantage.

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c. Where the individual, manage to layer his or her

valuable knowledge with this rare skill, again clinical

psychiatry, but in addition through practice and

experience manage to create some individual

overstandings which is not to be found anywhere

else, then one would have created for him or herself

a sustained competitive advantage.

My charge to you is to go forth and create your own

individual sustained competitive advantage.

In the JCS we would have been preaching a likkle but

tallawah mantra for the last two years on the

premise that the ICT domain is a level playing field

globally and that, just as we do in sports and

entertainment, Jamaica has a lot to offer in those

areas that emerge from the Academy, like ICT. The

IMAGINE Cup and CISCO winners have demonstrated

this and therefore we should all strive to “Punch

above your weight class”

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Why is this VRIO model important ?

The truth is that Ubiquitous Resources and

Capabilities does not give any advantages to firms

nor to individuals as everybody has access to and

enjoy these resources.

In the ICT industry , Ubiquitous Resources and

Capabilities, like Cloud technology, mobile

telephony, tablets, VOIP etc are all valuable.

But by the act of merely acquiring and deploying

these acquired technologies, the best we can hope

to achieve is comparative parity as everybody will

have them.

Further, these standard Imported ICT Resources are

representative of imported innovation and

knowledge and therefore we cannot hope to use

them, by themselves, to compete in the same globe

from which they came.

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As a country, we have to layer our local knowledge

capabilities and capacities, or overstandings, on top

of these ubiquitous but valuable assets in order to

compete competitively at an advantage.

My charge to you, therefore, is to strive to build

indigenous innovation and knowledge.

Until we build our local capacity to innovate we will

forever consume the innovation and knowledge of

others.

Here is a paradox; Jamaica has a very high rating by

the IMF for our rate of private investment which

was consistently recorded at 28% over the decades

of the 90’s and several years after. This rate is

similar to the rates of private investment among the

East Asian tigers. Yet despite this, the World

Economic Forum tells us that we have what is

known as a low rating for the factor “firm capacity

to innovate”, meaning the capacity for our business

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firms to generate new products, services, processes,

models, methods and systems achieve sustainable

competitive advantage is very low. Our last rating

in 2010 was 107th out of 139 country globally.

Independently, The Global Innovation Index ,

produced annually by INSEAD in France, tells us that

we are 95th out of 125 countries surveyed on the

Index of innovation.

Normally we are taught that if you score in the high

80’ and 90’s that is a good thing, however, in the

context of these indices smaller is better and high

scores are bad. We really want to get low nominal

values as our scores.

We should ask ourselves why a bright, creative,

smart people falls so low on these various global

indices.

I think that it is because we are not giving full room

for the expression of local creativity and innovation

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but find it easier, almost by default, to opt to

acquire other peoples innovations.

We in the JCS charge you as graduates to be part of

the movement to change this state of affairs.

I have my own theory as to why this is so and I will share

this with you. It goes to the heart of the motivation to

innovate.

There are two fundamental ways in which we process

information and action; some people call it convergent

versus divergent thinking.

Convergent Thinkers tend to approach problem-solving

by gathering relevant pre-existing data, facts and

information together, observing the emerging patterns

in the data, deriving insights (or overstandings) and then

synthesising solutions based on these insights.

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Divergent Thinkers tend to explore uncharted areas, ask

the open-ended “why not” question, generate lots of

options and possibilities and then select the most novel

ways to answer that “why not” challenge.

Convergent thinking is associated with Intelligence.

Divergent thinking is associated with Creativity

Intelligence, whether explicit or implicit, is measurable.

Divergent thinking, on the other hand, is very hard to

measure, and herein lies the rub

It is therefore not surprising that the traditional

educational infrastructure is often associated with

seeking out, measuring, recognising and honing

intelligence or convergent thinking.

But here is what some interesting research is telling us;

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a. Innovation comes out of creativity.

b. Persons that are Creative are associated with

Intrinsic Motivation as their driver

c. Long-run Individual productivity is associated with

innovation

d. Most significantly : Intelligence is associated with

routinised production processes but not with

creativity

e. Extrinsic rewards are strongly associated with

routinised production, however, creativity does

not react well to external rewards

f. Persons consistently and persistently strive to be

self-determined , that is to engage in jobs, activities

and tasks because they find them interesting,

enjoyable and gain a level of satisfaction

g. Self-determined individuals will be the most

creative members of any business venture

h. These Self-determined individuals are best

motivated in a work climate where they are made

to feel that they are part of an environment that

empower them to contribute their thoughts and

choices freely to advancing the tasks at hand rather

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than being paid to work especially in a controlled

context.

Author Robert Sternberg puts it this way;

“Creativity in a societal context is best understood in terms

of a dialectical relation to intelligence and wisdom. In

particular, intelligence forms the thesis of such a dialectic.

Intelligence largely is used to advance existing societal

agendas. Creativity forms the antithesis of the dialectic,

questioning and often opposing societal agendas, as well

as proposing new ones. Wisdom forms the synthesis of the

dialectic, balancing the old with the new. Wise people

recognize the need to balance intelligence with creativity

to achieve both stability and change within a societal

context.”

I really think that this wisdom is Freddie’s “overstanding”

But Steinberg is also calling us to do something else. He

is calling us to be ambidextrous, that is to exploit your

existing intelligence for maximum value and so achieve

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stability but also to continually explore the future, with

your creativity, in order to yield benefits from the

inevitable changes

In the context of the 21st Century marketplace, as

opposed to the 19th Century marketplace, we therefore

get the best from our people when we encourage;

Consultation rather than Coercion or Controlling .

Self-motivation as opposed to System-motivation

Intrinsic Rewards as opposed to Extrinsic Rewards

Creativity as well as Intelligence

Wisdom or Overstanding as opposed to Knowledge

or Information

And so create Consultants as opposed to Workers

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The nature of the job has changed and is continuously

changing and your role in the organisation has to be

adjusted to this new reality. I would suggest that you

will not be entering the marketspaces as a mere worker

but that you will all be consultants. What do I mean by

that, you will be seen as trusted advisers to the various

stakeholders (your leaders, coaches, clients, suppliers)

that you will encounter. When you rise in the mornings

to tackle your clients or stakeholder issues, you would

be functioning as consultants rather than workers.

Now what is a graduate to expect as you go out into this

brave new hyper-competitive world. I recently received

some futurescoping from the Gartner Group which

predicted the top 11 trends for the future:

1. By 2015, low-cost cloud services will significantly disrupt the market for outsourcing IT services

Low-cost cloud services will based on emerging Industrialized low-cost IT services (ILCS) will in the next three to five years reset the value proposition

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of IT. The projected $1 trillion IT services market is at the beginning of a phase of further disruption, similar to the one the low-cost airlines have brought in the transportation industry.

2. The investment bubble will burst for consumer social networks in 2013 and for enterprise social software companies in 2014.

Vendors in the consumer social network space are competing with each other at a rate and pace that are unusually aggressive, even in the technology market. This will force market consolidation as recognition sets in that the opportunities for market differentiation and fast growth has eroded.

3. By 2016, at least 50% of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client instead of a desktop client.

With the rise in popularity of mobile devices and browser-based enterprise applications, email system vendors are also likely to build mobile clients for a diverse set of devices. While market opportunities for mobile device management platform vendors will soar, increased pressure will be placed vendors to accommodate an increasing portfolio of collaboration services, including instant messaging,

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Web conferencing, social networking and shared workspaces.

4. By 2015, mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1.

Smartphones and tablets represent more than 90% of the new net growth in device adoption for the coming four years, and increasing application platform capability across all classes of mobile phones is spurring a new frontier of innovation, particularly where mobile capabilities can be integrated with location, presence and social information to enhance the usefulness.

5. By 2016, 40% of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service.

While enterprises are evaluating the potential cloud benefits in terms of management simplicity, economies of scale and workforce optimization, it is equally critical that they carefully evaluate cloud services for their ability to resist security threats and attacks. Inspectors' certifications will eventually become a viable alternative or complement to third-party testing.

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6. At year-end 2016, more than 50% of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud.

Responding to tightening financial pressures, it is estimated that more than 20% of organizations have already begun to selectively store their customer-sensitive data in a hybrid architecture to reduce operational costs and streamline their efficiency.

7. By 2015, 35% of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department's budget.

Next generation digital enterprises are being driven by a new wave of business managers and individual employees who no longer need technology to be contextualized for them by an IT department and who are demanding control over the IT expenditure required to evolve the organization within the confines of their roles and responsibilities.

8. By 2014, 20% of Asia-sourced finished goods and assemblies consumed in the U.S. will shift to the Americas (including the Caribbean).

Political, environmental, economic and supply chain risks are causing many companies serving the U.S.

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market to shift sources of supply from Asia to the Americas, including Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada and the U.S. Except in cases where there is a unique manufacturing process or product intellectual property, most products are candidates to be relocated. (remember what we said earlier about the VRIO paradigm)

9. Through 2016, the financial impact of cybercrime will grow 10% per year, due to the continuing discovery of new vulnerabilities.

As IT delivery methods meet the demand for the use of cloud services and employee-owned devices, new software vulnerabilities will be introduced, and innovative attack paths will be developed by financially motivated attackers causing risks and vulnerabilities and bottom-line financial impact because of successful cyber attacks.

10. By 2015, the prices for 80% of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge.

While cloud operators can make strategic decisions about locations, tax subsidies are no long-term answer to managing costs, and investments in renewable-energy sources remain costly. Some cloud data center operators already include an

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energy surcharge in their pricing package, and Gartner analysts believe this trend will rapidly escalate to include the majority of operators driven by competitive pressures and a "me too" approach. Business and IT leaders and procurement specialists must expect to see energy costs isolated and included as a variable element in future cloud service contracts.

11. Through 2015, more than 85% of US Fortune 500 organizations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage as most organizations are ill prepared to address both the technical and management challenges posed by big data; as a direct result, few will be able to effectively exploit this trend for competitive advantage.

Current trends in smart devices and growing Internet

connectivity are creating significant increases in the

volume of data available, but the complexity, variety

and velocity with which it is delivered combine to

amplify the problem substantially beyond the simple

issues of volume implied by the popular term "big

data." Collecting and analyzing the data is not

enough -- it must be presented in a timely fashion so

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that decisions are made as a direct consequence that

have a material impact on the productivity,

profitability or efficiency of the organization. Most

organizations are ill prepared to address both the

technical and management challenges posed by big

data; as a direct result, few will be able to effectively

exploit this trend for competitive advantage.

And so on the eve of your stepping out into the

world, the signals are clearer than ever that we need

you to become world-class innovators in order to

take advantage of these emerging opportunities.

If we innovate successfully locally, we can reap rich

rewards from the rest of the globe.

I give one example, GoGSAT, a local innovation built

to improve GSAT outcomes by kids. GoGSAT uses

Cloud technologies but in a way that only a

Jamaican-borned company could. GoGSAT today is

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used by kids, parents and teachers right across the

Caribbean

And so in Summary:

Having acquired Valuable knowledge, skills and

abilities through your sting at VTI, continue to go

further through a commitment to lifelong learning

to acquire your rare, and non-inimitable assets and

build your own overstandings in order to enjoy

sustainable competitive advantages in your own

future endeavours.

Be self-determined by finding interest, enjoyment

and satisfaction in what you do.

Be wise and so balance intelligence with creativity

Punch above your weight class for although we are

likkle we are tallawah

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Be ambidextrous: exploit your existing knowledge

skills and abilities for maximum value but always

continually explore the future by keeping an eye

ahead as to the emerging trends and use that

information to help to reposition you to beneficially

reap from the changes

I commend you the graduands of the Vector

Technology Institute Class of 2011 to the world

Thank you.