Service professionals still relevant THE SUN Malaysia is no exception that visualises industrialisation as a catalyst for economic development. In his book on The Conditions of Economic Progress published in 1960, Professor Collin Clark predicted that a nation would pass through three stages of economic progress. As he wrote, “... as time goes on and communities become more economically advanced, the numbers engaged in agriculture tend to decline relative to the numbers in manufacture, which in their turn decline, relative to the numbers engaged in service”. So far, the Malaysian economic progress has fitted well with Clark’s proposition. The period between 1958 and 1970 saw the dominance of the agriculture sector, which contributed to Malaysia’s economic development.