Malta is too small to generate its own ideas. Malta can adopt ideas from abroad to excel. Malta cannot produce a Nobel Laureate. These three statements have one thing in common: they are wrong.

[attach id=677472 size="medium" align="right"]Physician and scientist Niels Ryberg Finsen | Photo: Wikimedia Commons[/attach]

To prove this let’s look at other countries. Iceland has Nobel winner Halldor Laxness; the Faroe Islands have Niels Ryberg Finse; Santa Lucia has two Nobel Laureates - Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott. They all have populations much smaller than the Malta’s. Size is not an issue.

How much they celebrate research is a big difference to Malta. The Faroe Islands’ government website boasts that their small size is an advantage and turns them into a research island.

Iceland in­vests over two per cent of its GDP in research. Compare that to Malta’s meagre 0.77 per cent in 2015.

Malta’s GDP rate of growth is around six to seven per cent; there is no reason it cannot invest millions more in research. The time is ripe to make Malta’s economy more diverse and safer for when the good times inevitably finish.

Many companies that have set up a branch in Malta have not invested in research locally. They keep that homebound.

Malta needs to come up with its own ideas, its own Nobel Laureates, or it will keep lagging behind – let’s think forward and make Malta great.

Article inspired by Prof. Godfrey Baldacchino’s article ‘Can Malta produce a Nobel Laureate?’ for Think magazine.

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