Roundtable Discussion | Bottom-Up Inclusive Community Development Using Technology, 20 January 2026

“Development isn’t theory. It’s practice, delivery, and the courage to fail fast.” “You can’t change demand without fixing supply, reform has to move both sides.” “Those who succeed fear change; those who seek success welcome risk.” “If 99 fail but 1 becomes a unicorn, that’s not failure, that’s strategy.” Roundtable Discussion | Bottom-Up Inclusive Community Development Using Technology, 20 January 2026 Chaired and opened by Dr. Nungsari Ahmad Radhi, KRI Chairman, this roundtable anchored a critical conversation on why global goals, ambitious policies, and large funding flows continue to fall short of delivering tangible improvements in people’s everyday lives. Opening the discussion, Tan Sri Andrew Sheng, Chairman of the George Town Institute of Open and Advanced Studies (GIOAS) and former KRI Chairman, challenged conventional development thinking by framing development as a complex, adaptive system, one that must embrace experimentation, entrepreneurship, and blended finance. He highlighted how community-led innovation, supported by AI, data, and inclusive financial ecosystems, can empower SMEs, villages, and local institutions to scale impact, translating sustainability, wellbeing, and the SDGs from abstract ambitions into outcomes rooted in local realities. Building on this, Prof. John W. Crawford, Emeritus Professor of Sustainability and Complex Systems at the University of Glasgow, explored “Scaling and Accelerating Development in an Uncertain World.” He underscored why place-based, community-led models, strengthened by integrated digital systems, local data, and shared knowledge networks, are essential for turning national SDG commitments into meaningful, scalable results across Malaysia’s towns, villages, and regions. The session concluded with Sneha Poddar, Head of International at GIOAS, who introduced the New Earth Ecosystem, a five-pillar framework that redefines how value is measured and generated by integrating natural capital, social wellbeing, economic systems, and digital public infrastructure. Drawing on real-world implementations in Bhutan and India, she demonstrated how phygital, data-driven approaches can create community-level balance sheets and support more holistic, resilient development pathways. Together, the discussion reinforced a shared message: inclusive, green development will not be delivered top-down. It must be designed with communities, grounded in data, enabled by technology, and bold enough to learn by doing.