But to capture the challenges and rewards of knowledge creation and utilization, we need to change the way we think and do things.
That is the challenge that PNG, like other developing countries, faces and must contend with. Without at least a minimum level of science and technology capabilities and access to knowledge and information, developing countries, including PNG, cannot expect to improve significantly their standards of living.
Baloiloi said this in a keynote address he gave at the opening of the senior education officers conference in Alotau this week.
He said leaders and technocrats involved in planning and developing human capital and resource in the country needed to shift their focus to start laying the foundations and prerequisite conditions of our society to accommodate the challenges of the future that were changing very quickly.
He said all the discussions on development planning and management that he had observed seemed to be preoccupied with making right the wrongs of history or fixing and improving what we were doing now, instead of laying the foundations and prerequisite conditions to accommodate the future challenges.
Baloiloi said in the past development thinking recognized only three factors of production — land, labor and capital. Today, however, knowledge of science and technology were recognized as the key factors of production in socio-economic development.
“Societies in the 21st century will increasingly become knowledge-based whose development will be powered increasingly by a knowledge economy,” he said.
