**4. Organisation culture**

**Figure 1**. Not only the competitiveness of higher education system that plays critical role, but also right from early childhood education (Pre-school), primary, secondary, vocational and tertiary education that ensures a country's competitiveness in its overall education system.

**Figure 1.** A model of human capital for Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 revolution. Source: Author's own

The effectiveness of higher education system stresses the element of human capital (scholars, higher education managers, educators, academics, students, etc.): the overall effectiveness evaluation system is based on the human competencies, ensuring the performance of higher education institutions, its evaluation, quality assurance frameworks, potential demand or final outcomes [11]. This is where most developing countries should focus to revolutionise their education for knowledge and innovative society that results in the national competitiveness. Good and competitive education system ensures a country of creative and knowledgeable population that contributes immensely at national innovation systems (NIS) as individual or organisation. In this study's conceptual (**Figure 1**), this relationship has been demonstrated. Any education system or policy should focus learning outcomes that stimulate the three components of creativity (creative-thinking skills, expertise and cognitive) at any level of the education. When these people are nurtured under this type of education system, then that assures

Education systems that encourage and promote learners to question what they have been taught in formal as well as informal classrooms is an ideal for innovation-driven economy as it develops calibres of society where creative thinking is the norm of the day. This type of behaviour should be entrenched in the society as a whole, for example, early childhood education development level. When children are allowed to questioning, it leads to knowing, which develop their mental faculty to reason and analyse things from different perspectives. However, in most developing countries, particularly sub-Saharan-Africa countries, the cultural practices are that a child must not question anything coming from an adult person, as this is considered to be rude. In addition, it is viewed as a taboo and such children are seen as disrespectful to adult persons. But to create innovation-driven economy, any education policy should be such that it foster and nature creativity of the learners right from early childhood education development to higher education. This equips a country with creative and knowledgeable population that is capable for innovation imperatives. An attempt has been made to demonstrate three components of creativity that any education systems should focus on given creativity is a precursor to innovation. Education systems in the developing countries are products of colonialism that was developed without most of the developing countries people's participation, since then

a country of not only creative, but also knowledgeable society [7].

illustration.

48 Digital Transformation in Smart Manufacturing

little has been done to reflect the changes that have taken place in the world.

Culture is the glue that glued a particular people together. In defining culture, several scholars have offered different definitions; however, of interest is that of [13] who defined culture as *"the shared ways in which groups of people understand and interpret the world"*. While on the one hand, Ref. [14] states that culture is something that is learned and therefore is entrenched in a society or nation. It is akin to a "mental programme" that is developed early in life and fortified through a widespread programme of socialisation. "The usual act of idea is greatly changed by culture" [15]. This is because of the effect, culture has on the lives of people; it provides a structured and highly consistent way of living that is not deliberately constructed [15]. Tse [13, 14] postulates a real-world application of culture to living, implying that culture can be perceived as an "onion" in which the central represents the value systems and the covers growing out of it denote customs and rites expected from values. The question that bog us are how does a national culture promotes and hinders a country's innovation capacity? Throughout history and civilisations, those involve in innovation are gifted people who take creativity and risk. Others work independently, while some with groups and organisations. But, in almost cases, these persons want support and infrastructure to transform their concepts and creative ideas into something concrete and marketable. While individual instinct, inventive ability and tendency are instrumental in moving innovation projects forward, the surrounding environment and culture serve as the incubator that aids or inhibits innovation [16]. It is common to see in developing countries' people laugh at innovators or inventors simply because they failed to make ingenuity materialise or their experiment could not see the light of the day. This is what I call "great killers of creativity and innovation". Such innovators, inventors or creators need moral support irrespective of the outcomes of their experiments. Otherwise, the would-be innovators will naturally shy away from such innovation endeavours in future fearing to be turned into a laughing stock by the society in which they live. The support from the society and the government naturally make these innovators, creators and inventors to aspire for more of innovative ventures. Therefore, supportive national culture irrespective of success or failure will motivate more innovators to come forward and offer something new, which in turn can be transformed into innovation imperatives.

Innovative culture is a tolerance of ambiguities, failures, divergent views and people are praised for trying out something new irrespective of the outcomes of such experiments. Much creativity has been killed due to the culture of intolerance to failures, as people are laughed at whenever they failed to achieve something they are experimenting with. Organisations as well as nations that want to be competitive in Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 revolution must be at the forefront to encourage diverse ideas as a way to foster creativity.

To tap on the creativity of the entire population, outreach and other mechanisms need to be put in place that involves citizens. It is a bottom-up approach to problem solving. Governments should be ready to reward and incentivise innovators in the economy through appropriate legislations and policies as a way to promote innovation at a national level [21]. Such recognition of innovativeness strengthen and motivate innovators to come up with more creative approaches to solving real societal problems such as unemployment, poverty, infrastructure

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It is unquestionable that the government plays a significant role in encouraging and stimulating innovation in the economy. This is achieved through various ways such as enactment of legislation that is pro-innovation as well as sustainable economic development. Government, too, can change the state of happiness, commitment and dedication in a society towards innovation [18].

Since the beginning of Adam and Eve, knowledge has always existed and the co-existence of knowledge and humanity is shown in different human-made exploits [22]. Such exploits can be seen from Pyramids of Egypt, Taj Mahal in India and many others. Just like an organisation, a country's capability to innovate hangs on its domestic (within the boarder) competencies such as its own knowledge, organisational and technological base as well as its skills in discovery, embracing, developing and expanding knowledge generated within its boarders and collaborations with its proximate environment [23]. Knowledge-grounded development in today's global economy has become an arsenal and the ability of nations to generate, transfer and apply knowledge, but also to "tap external knowledge as well as adapt such knowledge for specific needs" locally [24]. For sustained (knowledge) development to take place, countries need to establish mechanisms that facilitate the circulation of data, information and

In the twenty-first century, new organisations are emerging where knowledge is the primary production resource as opposed to capital and labour [26]. It is now believed that efficient utilisation of existing knowledge could create wealth for organisations. Knowledge management (KM) refers to the process of enhancing organisation performance by designing and implementing tools, processes, systems, structures and culture to improve the creation, sharing and the use of knowledge [27, 28]. Knowledge is increasingly becoming more valuable because management is taking into account the value of creativity, which allows for the transformation of one form of knowledge to the next. The perception of the existing relations among numerous systems elements leads to new interpretations and this means another knowledge level where a new perceived value is generated [29]. This relationship denotes that innovation highway hangs on the knowledge development [29, 30]. This relationship has well been

Previous studies [24] have shown that knowledge generation or acquisition, knowledge sharing and knowledge leverage or utilisation build employees' skills are relevant to the process of innovation. Knowledge management that facilitates collaboration between employees

issues, health issues and other myriad problems facing a country.

**6. National knowledge management**

knowledge across developing and developed nations [25].

captured in the proposed conceptual framework (**Figure 1**).
