Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

The ASEAN Data Analytics eXchange (ADAX) office, was the location for a meet up and discussion forum with Dr Karl of the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and local businesses and government agencies to get a better idea of the Big Data adoption that is currently going on in the country.

Attendees came from as far as Sabah and Terengganu to partake in the forum which held approximately 50 people.

“The Big Data movement in Malaysia was the initiation of the Malaysian Prime Minister when he visited silicon valley approximately 4 years ago,” shared Dr Karl. “He returned and asked MDEC to look into the area because he was very inspired by what he saw. So we created a division to research how big data can be used in Malaysia and it has grown since then. We are still at the infancy stage and have a lot to learn as a nation.” He added.

To a question from the floor asking how is MDEC bringing the adoption of Big Data and the innovation to the masses, Dr Karl informed us that it is always a two way street. They are open to ideas looking at better and more effective ways to inform the public and grow the interest.

Dr Karl says that corporations too need to change their old ways of slow innovation and bring in new blood and new ideas to meet todays challenges.

“This year alone, we have already had hackathons run by MAS and Air Asia as well as another one by Grab. This shows that the big corporations see the need for change and we are there to help facilitate that change.”

He explained that MAS approached MDEC to help them with their hackathon and they ran workshops to find the top 50 problems that need to be solved.

He shared that since it was the first time running the hackathon, they planned for only 100 participants. They ended up with having almost 800 participants and therefore had to streamline them down to 100 participants only.

Another issue he brought up was that in the legacy model of running large companies, departments tend to silo themselves and not look for answers outside their department or their field of knowledge. But in the digital age, these silos need to be broken down because a lot more can be learned from working together.

He shared about what Jack Ma, the Chinese Tycoon had said about what business Ali Baba was about.

“Ali Baba is actually a Big Data platform. They use the platform to conduct their businesses. From data about how much the vendor product is liked by the customer, to the latest trends that is happening in China or around the world, vendors can derive from their platform and plan their businesses accordingly. This is the real power of Big Data,” he said.

In closing Dr Karl shared that the technology and the adoption process is still very new in Malaysia. That there will be mistakes made and also new discoveries to be found. He shared that it is better to make the mistakes and over time reach the desired results, than to have never tried.

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