Rahamon Ade Bello

The challenges of the 21st century require that developed and developing countries transform our approach to economic developments. Central to this transformation is technological innovation, from basic research to commercialization, for environmental sustainability. To date, the vast majority of clean technology innovation has occurred in developed countries, where strong research university, publicly and privately funded laboratories, and intellectual property regimes have successfully encouraged entrepreneurship for green growth. The challenge for developing countries, Nigeria inclusive, is to ensure that they, particularly the least Developed Countries (LDCs), do not miss out on this technology transformation and the opportunity to leap frog their own development pathways onto more environmentally friendly development trajectories.

However, the challenge faced here may be the need for developing national capabilities to innovate and create business opportunities in emerging technological areas as there may be a dearth of early stage funding for commercialization of technological innovations by both government and non-government agencies due to higher risk of investment in un-proven technologies. Thus, major proportion of available early stage funding gets invested in relatively low risk opportunities, based on proven technologies, thereby limiting innovations to reach the market.

Apparently, invention and innovation are often used interchanging, however, they differ. The Merriam- Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (2010) defines inventions as “the act of creating a new process or a new machine” and an innovation as “a new way of doing something”. While these definitions may appear similar, they are indeed different. An invention creates a unique or novel device or process. The invention may be an improvement upon a machine or product, or a new process for creating an object or a result. An invention that achieves a completely unique function or result may be a radical breakthrough. Such works are novel, and not obvious to others skilled in the same field. On the other hand, innovation is the development of new customer value through solutions that meet new needs, unarticulated needs, or old customer and market needs in new ways. This is accomplished through different or more effective product, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society.

Therefore, innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a better and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers to the use of better and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of a product itself. Innovation also differs from improvement in that innovation refers to the notion of doing something different rather than doing the same thing better. It is also different from discovering (a thing or principle, which already existed, needing only to be found).
The generation of technology involves the “innovation chain” which is the sequence of steps by which an idea or concept is converted into a product or process. This sequence of steps varies with the circumstances, but can often be schematically represented thus:

Idea/ Relevant Basic Development Engineering
Applied Research and Design for Manufacturing
Concept Research

Product/Service Marketing

Figure 1. Sequence of steps in innovation chain.

The terms are define as follows

· Relevant Basic Research refers to the synthesis or assembly of understanding relevant to the technological objectives;

· Applied Research is the activity of demonstrating the technical feasibility or the synthesis of understanding leading to a new technology;

· Developing and Design describes the activity of coming up with a version of the new product/service that can be ‘commercialized’ in the economy, that is, a product/service that meets performance, reliability and economic requirement;

· Engineering for manufacturing refers to the activity of demonstrating that the working technology can be manufactured at a price acceptable to the economy.

The above explanation implies that technology is used to invent things and therefore technology lends itself to innovation. Technological innovation can be defined as the process through which new (or improved) technologies are developed and brought into widespread use. It comprises new product and processes and significant technological changes of products and processes. It can be divided into three parts: (i) generation or realization of new idea, based on technology, capability or knowledge (invention); (ii) development of this into a reality or product (realisation); and (iii) diffusion, implementation and marketing of this new idea, technology, capability or knowledge (implementation). So, technological innovation focuses specifically on technology and how to embody it successfully in products, services and processes.

Innovation can be thought of as being composed of research, development, demonstration, and development. An innovation has been implemented if it has been introduced on the market (product innovation). However, innovation is not a linear process: there are various interconnections and feedbacks loops between the afore-mentioned stages, and often even the stages themselves cannot be trivially disaggregated. Innovations involves the involvement of a range of organizations and personnel (laboratories, firms, financing organizations, etc.) with different institutional arrangement underpinning the development and deployment of different kinds of technologies; contextual factors such as government policies also significantly shape the innovation process (sagay and van der Zwaan, 2006).

Technological innovation is often blindly referred to as “progress”. The question is: progress towards what? We now live in the age of high technology. In the past generation, most people spent most of their time in nature, and then in later years more often in social settings. In the modern word, most of us spend an ever-increasing amount of time in an interconnected web of machines. What currently drives this technological innovation, this technological bubble that defines our age, include self-interest, greater productivity, greater consumption, the law of supply and demand, and the commoditization of the world. This economic system which has now succeeded in global hegemony, dictate all our social interactions. In early societies, the market system was never the method by which basic societal problems were addressed; rather the market place was delegated only a limited role by our ancestors compared to their cultural and religious beliefs and social patterns.

Not only are the current dominant economic system and their intertwined technology systems at odds with the ecological cycles of the natural world, but they are also actively and quickly eviscerating the planet. We are exponentially reducing the earth’s capacity in every natural realm: land, air, water, and everything in between, through ozone depletion, acid rain, species extinction, deforestation, and desertification. Hence, our survival and planet’s survival must not threatened by commodifying nature to match our systems through technological innovation. Our industrial technologies must not create national and/or global environmental crises. We are now faced with technological dilemma – the ‘developed” portion of the world’s population has become dependent on the technological environment. Yet the same technologies that support life for the richest part of human population are threatening the very viability of life on Earth. It is thus crystalline clear that we cannot live with our technologies, and we cannot imagine living without them. It is advisable therefore we institute appropriate technological innovation in sync with the cycles of nature, without causing planetary and human peril. Attorneys and policy makers have somewhat succeeded in passing and utilising laws that would limit the impacts of capital and industrial systems. Scientists and Engineers are urged to develop more holistic visions of their vocations. This approach/option will be a step toward addressing economic development within the context of rather than at the expense of our global environment and the society which depends upon it.

People have come to the conclusion that our current technology is not compatible with life. They have foreseen the growing conflict between globalization, mass consumption, and the laws of nature. However, their solution to the dilemma is very different. Rather than change our economics and technology to better comport with the needs of living things, corporations and government began to engineer life itself to better accommodate the market system and the technologies upon which it is predicated. Ignoring the constrains of the natural world living systems are to be re-made, engineered at the genetic and molecular level to further the necessities of the technological age.

We must recognise and address the underlying philosophy and economy that drives and controls technological innovation. An order of magnitude in change is required; we must institute a paradigm-shift to a system of governance and life that is based on co-existence with and benefit of natural system. We can also move from the technological age to the ecological age. We must begin treating ourselves and the natural world as a part of an interconnected web; stop thinking in straight lines and start thinking in circles. “Progress” must include the natural as well as human world, encouraging mutually enhancing human – earth relationships. Human technologies should function in an integral relationship with earth technologies, not in a despotic manner. Nature, over hundreds of millions of years and through an infinite number of experiments, worked out ecosystems that were already flourishing abundantly when we came to exist. How can technological innovation help us determine how we can best to present in this context? Morden society must treat life and the natural world as the spiritual force it is. There must be mystique of rivers if we are ever going to restore the purity of our rivers. This is not a new idea, it is actually the oldest. Is this an idealized vision? Perhaps, but it’s a considerably less naive world vision that which claims we can sustain our current industrial system.

We must evolve our technological systems so that they are democratic and responsive to us, that we are responsible for them, and so that they comport with nature and with life forms on the earth. We can dust off the old ways and make them the new again, making them more seductive and more logical than our current destructive ways. Only with these changes will technological innovation properly serve the planet and enhance, as well as extend, a meaningful human experience.

The promise that a given new technology will deliver environmentally benign electricity to cheap to meter, and hunger and poverty, or cure disease is very seductive. That is why the claims are made with many emerging technologies – nuclear power, biotechnology and nanotechnology, to name a few.

In addition to benefit, new technologies come with social, economic and environmental cost, and sometimes significant political implications.

If we can only make technological innovation ‘safe’, its development will necessarily deliver wealth, health, social opportunities and even environmental gains. Ensuring technology safety is clearly very important. But simply assuming that ‘safe’ technology will deliver nothing but benefits, and that these benefits will be available to everyone, is – to put it mildly – quite optimistic.

Some thoughtful and critical question need to be asked and answered on the benefits and risks of technological innovation. These include questions about whether technology – and what sort of technology – could help to extract us from the quagmire we are in, and whether technology – and what sort of technology-will dig us further in. They would also evaluate the extent t which technology’s actual (rather than ideal ) applications will help or hinder, and the extent to which helpful applications will be accessible to those who need them. More significantly, we will also ask how decision making about technology could be opened up to those affected – wider publics.

The last decade was a period of significant technological innovation in which microelectronics, information technologies, medical treatments, telecommunications and biotechnologies were developed, and mass air travel expanded dramatically. Technologies transformed economies, political structures and daily life for both better and worse. In this time of rapid technological development, there were winners, loser and a new scale of environmental cost. The per capital ecological footprint of our country grew. The gap between the global rich and the global poor widened. This is not imply that technological innovation has been the only factor driving increasing resource use and widening inequities – clearly it has not; a range of social, economic and political factors are relevant. Rapid technological innovation can be the answer to our national and /or global problems.

Our experience demonstrates that technological innovation will not in itself enable us to live within our means – no amount of technology delivered efficiency will enable endless economic growth on a finite planet. Nor will technology reduce the inequities that divide rich and poor – this requires social, economic and political change.

There is a tendency to focus on the potential of new technologies to address our most pressing problems, rather than to seek better deployment of existing technologies, better design of existing system, or changes in production and consumption. This reflects a preference to avoid systemic change. It also reflects an unfounded optimism that the ‘solution’ lies just over the horizons.

But sometimes, ensuring better deployment of existing technologies is the most effective way to deal with a problem. Just as wider accessibility of existing drugs and medical treatments could prevent a huge number of deaths world- wide, improving urban storm water harvesting and re-use, housing insulation and mass transit public transport could go a long way to reducing our ecological footprint- potentially at a lower cost and at a lower risk than mooted high tech options.

If evaluating the implementation or performance failures of previous technologies reveals economic or social obstacles or constrains, it is probably these factors that warrant our attention. There is no reason to believe they will magically disappear once new technologies arrive.

Technological choices have a key part to play in achieving urgently needed environmental and social change. Making the best choices that we can has never been so important. This requires us to look beyond safety to ask bigger questions about new technologies. We must ask what is required to achieve our most critical social and environmental objectives, and be willing to accept that the new technology is not always the answer. We must also ask what is required to ensure that those most affected by the outcomes of technology decision making have a voice in that decision making process.

2. Invention vs. Innovation
Innovation is distinguished in the literature on the study of science and technology from invention even though these two terms are used interchangeably in ordinary language, as stated earlier. The term innovation is used to describe the process of transforming an idea or concept into a product/service. It include much more than the term invention, which is usually restricted to the process of going from an idea or concept to a contrivance or prototype or design. In addition to invention, innovation involves the crucial process of commercializing the product or service in the economic activity of a country. The process of innovation can be represented as shown in Figure 1 by the innovation chain, which is the chain of steps leading from an idea or concept to a product /service in the economy.

I will rather chip in a word of advice that goes thus: do not invent something that nobody wants. Popular history usually gives credit to Thomas Edison for inventing the light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell for inventing the telephone, and Guglielmo Marconi for inventing the radio. But the truth is they invented none of these things. Their recognition and association with these successful technologies are largely due to their inspired business practices. Their respective successes and fame resulted from their ability to cost-effectively translate inventions into marketable product or, in other words, to be innovative. The same innovative spirit should be at the heart of every one present here today. The innovation of the light bulb by Heinrich Goebel led to innovation of the Edison Electric Grid (a marketable product). The invention of the telephone by Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci led to the innovation of the Bell public Switched Telephone Network and the invention of radio transmission by Nikola Tesla led to the invention of wireless telegraphy and opening of the world’s first “wireless” factory by Marconi.

3. Sustainability Development

The United Nations (1987) suggest that sustainable development “implies meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Alternatively, sustainability educator Needham (2011) referred to sustainable development “as the ability to meet the needs of the present while contributing to the future generations’ needs”.

The concept of sustainable development plays an important role in the 21st century. The three aspects of the sustainable development are: economy, environment and society. The attention of the people who work in the field of sustainable development is focused on the quantification of each aspect as well as on the all possible interactions between the three elements of the sustainable development. Sikdar (2003) proposed a typology of indicators, considering the three dimensions of sustainable development in three distinct groups:

1. One dimensional (ID) indicators which provide information about one
aspect of sustainable development: economical, ecological or societal.

2. Two dimensional (2D) indicators which provide information about two of
aspects of sustainable development: socio-ecological socio-economic or
economic- ecological.

3. Three dimensional (3D) indicators which provide information about all the
three aspects sustainable development.