How Emerging Nations Innovate Through Necessity and Resilience
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Motorbikes in Da Nang, Vietnam. Photo provided by Dickie Currer
Article Summary
- Natural disasters like Typhoon Yagi highlight the severe challenges faced by emerging nations, yet also underscore their communities’ resilience and ability to rebuild despite frequent instability.
- Innovation often arises from necessity to address local needs with resourcefulness and efficiency, as is the case in Vietnam and the Philippines, where ride-sharing motorbikes or trolley systems.
- Cultural traits like adaptability, comfort with uncertainty, and communal problem-solving drive technological and social innovation in Southeast Asia’s most vulnerable regions.
By Dickie Currer
In early September 2024, Typhoon Yagi tore through East Asia, bringing recorded winds of up to 150 km/h.
The storm left a devastating trail in its wake, claiming over 230 lives and displacing thousands more as severe flooding and property destruction rendered many homeless.
For developing nations like Vietnam and the Philippines, the impact of such natural disasters can be even more profound, amplifying challenges that are already deeply rooted.
Yet, spending time with the resilient people of these countries has shown me how adversity often gives rise to extraordinary strength and innovation.
As the philosopher Plato aptly said, “necessity is the mother of invention”.
To say the people of Southeast Asia have endured much would be an understatement. From European colonisation and ethnic genocides to civil wars, world wars, and periods of widespread poverty, the region has often found itself on the harshest edges of modern history.
Yet, time and again, it emerges stronger, a testament to the enduring spirit of its people. It’s no surprise that its peoples have the values of resilience and adaptability at their core.
And it’s these values which have now bled into the way their countries evolve in the technological age.
An Le, CEO of NFQ Asia, a global corporation that helps tech companies scale their operations, explained this concept to me using the analogy of Vietnamese traffic.
Known for its chaotic nature, the streets are filled with motorbikes weaving and swerving en masse, seemingly without rhyme or reason to an untrained observer.
Yet in spite of the absence of rules, the traffic moves slowly and safely, almost like water flowing.
An explained that “what makes this possible is a deep-seated cultural trait – our comfort with the unknown and our ability to make our way through it”.
“On any given day, you can lose everything you appreciated in life. Such is the reality we have faced time and again.
“And yet, we managed to rebuild, to innovate, and to find stability in the most unstable conditions over and over again.”
Boatmen of Pagsanjan falls. Photo provided by Dickie Currer
During my time in Vietnam, I almost exclusively used ride-sharing app Grab to book motorbikes to get me around.
For less than AUD $2 for a 30 minute ride, I could traverse the streets of Ho Chi Minh City like a local.
Ride-sharing motorbikes have yet to hit the shores of Australia – and likely never will. But in a country where buying a car is an achievable dream for only the lucky few, it’s the perfect example of innovating through necessity. And a symbol of the country’s means of channeling its hardship into a positive for the local economy.
Similarly, in the Philippines, it was modes of local transport that perfectly demonstrated this regional resilience.
In Laguna province, Luzon, a three-hour drive from the country’s sprawling mega-capital Manila, I came across two more examples of innovation driven by resilience.
Firstly in the village of Los Banos, which is cut in half by an old railway track and has been in a state of abandonment since the 1960s – in a time when the Philippines was the region’s second most promising economy behind a post-war Japan.
Rather than let the track become a hindrance, the locals have built four-wheel trolleys, pushed by local “trolleymen” helping them to ferry their shopping (and the odd curious tourist such as myself) from one side of the village to the other.
Helping to ease the burden of life living by a railway, and in turn creating jobs for the local youths.
Just a short ride from Los Baños, you’ll find the breathtaking Pagsanjan Falls. A winding river flows through a canyon, leading to a dramatic waterfall beneath which it’s safe to raft.
The journey upstream to the falls is unforgettable.
Local boatmen, some well into their 60s, pull you through the rapids for over an hour with remarkable strength and determination. Skills honed by a lifetime of surviving through sheer tenacity.
Dickie Currer with Jessie Trang Anh Nguyen. Photo provided by Dickie Currer.
As Typhoon Yagi becomes just another catastrophe to add to the many of the region’s past, it’s easy to forget about the people it has impacted.
Though as they have time and time before, I’m sure they’ll find their way to adapt and overcome.
As friend and fellow innovator Jessie Trang Anh Nguyen tells me, “we rebuild and move on, that’s what we do”.
In an age where disruption often precedes the greatest innovation, maybe the people of these emerging economies are actually the best placed to show us the way forward.
