Brain drain

Couple of years back during my short stint in the mid east, I was invited to give a short talk by a university there. The talk revolved around the topic of capital market and its close relationship with knowledge development in the mid east.

One of the main drivers of hi income economies is not just the ability to create and distribute wealth, but also the ability to maintain it. Wealth also should be defined in a larger perspective, not just material and monetary wealth, but should also includes knowledge wealth. A big shortfall for mid east economies is obviously their inability to develop their knowledge wealth which leads to their mismanagement of material wealth.

I can relate this observation to my own country Malaysia. Being suffered quite a huge problem of talent outflows for the past few years certainly will have a fatal consequences if not managed or prevented properly.

It seems that Malaysia has failed to retain its talent pool, which is then enjoyed by better developed economies who accepted these talents with their open arms.

We need to identify what are causes of this talent outflows and most professionals workforce will say that the environment is not conducive for these talents to live and work in Malaysia. Money is not always the main objective for these people, but the ability to develop, learn, contribute and get recognised is far more important.

Hope our government and private sectors will collaborate and find a long term solution to our worsening problem. After all in a move towards a more developed economy, we are in a dire need of these people.