ADMITTEDLY, there are some areas where Southeast Asia doesn’t always keep up with the Western world. Many innovations are tried and tested in the so-called “New World” before they reach our shores. But that doesn’t need to be so.
Clever entrepreneurs, the young and the young at heart, come up with innovative ways to solve our problems every day. Sometimes, they even solve problems we didn’t know we had.
Steve Jobs is a very worthy example of such forward thinking entrepreneurship. We had no idea how desperately we needed smart phones until he gave us the iPhone. Today, a mere 11 years later, many of us would display serious symptoms of withdrawal if we were to be separated from our handheld devices for even
a day.
On today’s global playing field, it would seem that Elon Musk, the creator of Tesla electric cars and former chief executive officer of PayPal, is the new and uncontested king of disruptive innovation. He has successfully disrupted and innovated industries as varied as money transfer, automotive, space exploration, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, and more.
So, it comes as little to no surprise that he has recently announced his intention to tackle the world’s traffic congestion troubles. He must have been very bored, stuck in Los Angeles’ abhorred rush hour jam one evening, when he came up with his latest brainchild — the Boring Company. Far from being dull, Musk’s new project consists in digging multi-layered tunnels underneath major cities, inside which personal cars or passenger pods will zoom commuters along at triple-digit speeds, as recently reported in Wired magazine.
After having successfully excavated test tunnels beneath his own company headquarters, Musk’s undertakings are now stuck in the worst possible hole — the local government’s permits and legislation bodies.
While the Boring Company might be going nowhere for a while, you might be wondering where I am going with this story. And what, if anything, does it have to do with Southeast Asia, and more specifically Malaysia, you ask?
Well, one subject Malaysia has no trouble competing with the Western world for, is undoubtedly traffic jams. During the early days of my expatriation to Malaysia some 18 years ago, road congestions were of biblical proportions. Over the course of the next few years, new highways, links, overpasses and tunnels managed to ease the pain of daily commuters on their way to and from their work place in and around Kuala Lumpur.
The large-scale investment under the National Transformation Programme (NTP), into Klang Valley’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system is a valiant attempt to curb our enthusiasm for driving.
According to the Nielsen Global Survey of Automotive Demand, “Malaysia boasts the third highest level of car ownership globally (93 per cent) and the highest incidence of multiple car ownership globally”. In 2014, 54 per cent of Malaysian households owned more than one car. Rising income levels in recent years and relatively affordable gas prices have even intensified Malaysians’ hunger for personal car acquisitions.
These statistics got me thinking; Elon Musk is by no means the only one pondering outlandish solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems while stuck in traffic.
How about combining two calamities to make one blessing?
How about merging our insatiable lust for new vehicles with California’s state transportation agency’s lack of enthusiasm for Mr Musk’s project?
What if the world’s chief disruptive inventor was given the opportunity to prove the feasibility of his design in Kuala Lumpur, instead of his seemingly ungrateful homeland?
What if, instead of leading the board for multiple car ownership, Malaysia became the global leader in innovative commuting
solutions?
What if our top disruptive entrepreneurs took a leap of faith? Mr Tony Fernandes, maybe?
The writer is a long-term expatriate, a restless traveller, an observer of the human condition, and unapologetically insubordinate