TECH4GOOD
Building a dynamic innovation ecosystem has become many countries' top priority today. It can generate economic, financial, and social benefits for all by helping create new jobs, increase productivity, and enhance the country's competitiveness. The Philippines intends to take the journey to achieve that when President Bongbong Marcos finally approved last Friday the National Innovation Agenda.
Small steps have been taken, but most were done in siloes with initiatives undertaken by both the public and private sectors. We finally are realizing that building a robust national innovation ecosystem requires a whole-of-country coordinated effort from the government, private sector organizations, academia, and civil society.
The passage of the Philippine Innovation Act of 2019 has provided the needed national policy that lays down the necessary foundations to operationalize such a whole-of-country approach to building the ecosystem. It mandates the creation of the National Innovation Council (NIC) chaired by the President himself and composed of 16 cabinet secretaries and seven executive members from the private sector representing the scientific, MSME, and business sectors.
Before the fifth meeting of the NIC last Friday, four incoming executive members including this author, took their oath administered by the President himself. Three more are expected to join very soon. We were privileged to be present when the President approved the innovation roadmap although we were not part of the working group who drafted the document.
The roadmap, officially known as the National Innovation Agenda and Strategy Document (NIASD), is aligned with Ambisyon Natin 2040 Philippine Development Plan and will make use of the country’s ranking in the annual Global Innovation Index as its yardstick for measuring progress. It acknowledges that innovation is vital to national development and sustainable economic growth. The goal, as underscored in the roadmap, is very clear: Achieve a smart and innovative Philippines – a productive, resilient, sustainable, and inclusive nation by 2032 to build a pathway towards our nation’s long-term goal of a matatag, maginhawa, at panatag na buhay para sa lahat.
The roadmap highlights the opportunities that the country has today: the enabling policies and reforms that support innovation, increased government support through programs meant to promote inclusive innovation, the presence of infrastructures and facilities that promote collaboration among stakeholders, and the strong interest among key players to collaborate.
It also puts into place strategies meant to address the challenges such as those related to inadequacies in human capital and resources for sustained research and development, limited capacity to innovate, weak linkages among innovation actors, and fragmented innovation programs being undertaken by both public and private sectors.
Leveraging on these opportunities and addressing the challenges can best be done by strategies that focus on the development of four important elements of a dynamic innovation ecosystem: creating a pervasive culture of innovation, capacitating the innovation actors, building platforms for cooperation, and connecting all the necessary innovation actors such as startups, funders, and market builders.
The framework put forward in the roadmap positions the entrepreneur at the center of the innovation process as they are the ones usually aware of the issues and problems in the market. Activities such as scientific exploration, product development, engineering and design, and market feedback revolve around entrepreneurship activities.
The document lays down an innovation governance framework meant to provide the foundations for building a dynamic innovation ecosystem for the Philippines. An innovation governing body, a role that the NIC will have to play, will put in place an organizational structure that will take care of decisions and resource allocation. Innovation policies will protect intellectual properties, allow resource sharing, enable innovation actors to work together, and promote trust among consumers. Innovation infrastructures will provide the physical structures and facilities to translate ideas into prototypes. Innovation financing, on the other hand, provides support for various innovation activities such as funding for commercialization. Finally, innovation programs are meant to build capacities and capabilities for innovation actors.
Using the ranking of the Philippines in the annual Global Innovation Index, the roadmap, if properly implemented, should put the country ranked 25th by 2040 from its current rank of 59th (fifth after Vietnam among ASEAN member states). In terms of human capital and research, the targets set are increasing the number of researchers (number/million population) from 174 based on the 2018 figures to 1,500 by 2040. The research budget should be increased (in terms of percent of GDP) from 0.32 in 2018 to 1.8 by 2040.
By creating an environment that fosters innovation, promoting collaboration among the players, investing in education and training, encouraging private sector investment, supporting commercialization, and measuring and evaluating the impact of the ecosystem, the Philippines can create the conditions for long-term and sustainable economic growth. We, the newly appointed executive members of the NIC, intend to work together to achieve the aspirations laid out in the roadmap. ([email protected])
(The author is an executive member of the National Innovation Council, lead convenor of the Alliance for Technology Innovators for the Nation (ATIN), vice president of the Analytics Association of the Philippines, and vice president, UP System Information Technology Foundation.