Growing Globalization

Driven by the breakthroughs in information and communication technology, and by globalization policies of major countries, the world has become more integrated and interdependent: globalization, rapid technology change and proliferation, increased business regulation, transparent and real-time information exchange, the threat of global terrorism. Each presents its own set of unique challenges and opportunities.

In order to stay competitive, many engineering and technology institutions strive to utilize the resources in both local and overseas markets by:

• Setting up joint or wholly owned ventures overseas
• Forming partnership with overseas organizations, collaborating with its overseas subsidiaries for designing, production, and marketing;
• Outsourcing parts, materials, talents, financial resources from overseas
• Increasing exchange of professional personal and technology with other countries
• Outsourcing engineers, or building international engineer teams
• Designing product in one country, producing and marketing it in many others

Need for Lifelong Learning

It is alarming that many of the basic skills and much of the knowledge that people acquire while they are at school, college or university soon become ‘out of date’. This is particularly true in many areas of science, engineering and technology. According to a 2002 International Labor Organization report, in the nineteen-eighties, the “half-life” of an engineer’s technical skills – that is, how long it takes for half of everything an engineers knew about his/her field to become obsolete – was estimated to vary from 7.5 years for mechanical and 5 years for electrical, to 2.5 years for software engineers. Most experts would agree that these numbers are probably smaller today.

In order to combat this skill and knowledge obsolescence, we continually need to review ‘what we know’ and ‘how we do things’ and, if necessary, update our individual repertoires of skill and knowledge assets. One obvious way of doing this is by means of lifelong learning.