By Dr. Meriam Ismail, MOHE

Dear all,
I want to share with you my understanding on k-economy within the M'sian realm. I welcome any form of suggestion or positive critique if any. I've been working in the education environment since 1983 when I first graduate as a teacher. I am currently attached with the Ministry of Higher Education, Putrajaya, Malaysia.

........ In our case, Malaysians still lack knowledge and skilled people in many fields, researhers who do research and write; writers, who write for the interest of it not just academic writers but the humanities who write novels for local & international audience.

I write quite often to journals, both refereed and unrefereed. My articles appear in Edication Quarterly for eg. I also do research in the areqas of my interests- organizational development focusing on innovation and creativity.

My instrument for assessing innovation which I have printed out is intended to be used for those orgs. which are interested to have their org. assessed on innovation. However for those interested it is better if your org. has acquired the ISO 9000 series as my instrument has some items on it. It is valid- the instrument because it is proven by a post hoc factor analysis which involeved 259 espondents. The results are amazing when I used it in certain orgs. to assess their innovation levels.

Now back to k-economy. Of course knowledge is to be acquired for various purpose but the main one is for attaining the highest virtue. However, since knowledge is normally required for creativity to be generated and then to precipitate innovation, in which case Malaysia is very much lagging and lacking compared to say USA or America, much less to say about spirituality, then it must be stressed to those acquiring knowledge (for the highest virtue), to at least contribute in coming up with creation and innovation so that novel products and services can be produced (This is a much lower level of knowledge attainment compared to attaining spiritual level).

Compared to the west which has undergone knowledge evolvment in many cycles, to most of them it is not so much a problem to use the knowledge acquired to come up with something beneficial at the same time using the knowledge they have acquired for enhancing knowledge itself.

Look at the number of refereed journals in many fields they have established and we subscribe. Of course we do to have journals which are subscribed by others but not so large. Look at the scores and scores of research in the Arts and Science disciplines they have stored both online and hard copies. Look at their volumes in libraries.It is amazing how their civilization took great care in storing and using knowledge.We are doing that too but it would be better if the pace is quickened.

In our case, Malaysians still lack knowledge and skilled people in many fields, researhers who do research and write; writers, who write for the interest of it not just academic writers but the humanities who write novels for local & international audience.

So this KM Malaysian association is a good start up and I have a dream that it could be extended further and generate knowledge, publish it and generate income for the benefit of its members and the Malaysian society at large. I wish this org. the best.

Thank you. Salam.

Dr. Meriam Ismail
Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia