The World Intellectual Property Day was celebrated on 26th of April 2017 in Port Moresby by the team from Intellectual Property Office of Papua New Guinea.
The IPO team utilized several media network to commemorate the day and at the same time provide awareness on Intellectual Property. This year’s theme was titled “Innovation Improving Lives”. The idea behind this theme was to promote the awareness on how innovation can improve lives.
Typical examples used were;
- Using medicine cure illnesses,
- Using advanced technology to provide safer transportation,
- Using improved agricultural techniques to feed the ever growing population in the world,
- Using renewable energy to generate electricity
- Shaping new ways of learning through Brail, Internet, Face-to-face interactive e-learning etc
But these are only some of the many things innovation has made possible for consumers around the world. And as time passes, people are becoming more and more creative as the world’s problems keep increasing. Innovators are looking for new ways to address the world’s problems and this gesture has impacted more lives in the world today without us knowing.
Evolution in life has forced mankind to be more creative in the way they do things and innovation is the result of this creativity. In PNG, there is a lot of potential in innovation as people become more educated and knowledgeable of their surroundings. This year the awareness created was to encourage people to be innovative by seeing the problems that exists and challenge themselves to develop new and creative ideas to improve their lives or that of others. While it is noted that there is already some work done by reputable organizations to encourage or nurture innovative ideas, more work still needs to be done in terms of making available supporting infrastructures and expertise to provide the proper guidance needed to create a population of innovative thinkers in PNG.
While the concept of nurturing innovative thinkers is new and still in its infancy stage, there is already discussions between stakeholders to enable the creation of a functional but yet practical innovation framework in PNG that will nurture a more coordinated approach in building innovation within the country. The aim of this framework is to be able to link this to the overall government goal under the pillars of Vision 2050 and be able to cascade the relevant strategies, objectives, action plans and performance measures down to the responsible agencies to see its implementation take shape. While the process maybe lengthy, it is important to take comfort in knowing that PNG is slowly but surely working towards the goal of including innovation as a contributor to the overall value chain of this nation.
