Creativity and innovation

As part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) which I mentioned in last week’s column, Go Negosyo, together with the British Embassy, is in the thick of preparations for the forthcoming Youth Entrepreneurship Summit (YES) that will be held again in Metro Manila at the SMX Convention Center on Nov. 19. To be different from previous summits, we are adopting the theme â€œPushing for Creativity and Innovation”. This is to put emphasis on the importance of constantly having creativity and innovation in one’s negosyo, be it in the form of innovative products or services, processes to cut cost, or as entirely new business model that will propel any business to another growth plane. It would be worthwhile to open our minds and think along this line, in case  your business is hitting the roof and stagnating in terms of sales and income.

Creativity and innovation are both important in the sense that, to be able to effectively market and sell your product or service, it has to stand out, it has to be different. That is where creativity comes in. The organization, not only the CEO, must live and breathe creativity. But what is creativity if it doesnt sell?  This is where innovation comes in, since creativity must in the end lead to greater sales and profits.  Innovation must have a clear market, address a need, or better yet, even create a new demand and a new market segment. In other words, it should lead to a commercial value.

The summit promises to be a very interesting, educational and empowering activity as we have partnered this time with the prominent marketing guru in our country today, our good friend and Go Negosyo Angelpreneur Josiah Go, whose passion is marketing education and business model innovation. He is also bringing the expertise of his learning institution, Mansmith and Fielders Inc. to this summit as our program partner. Josiah has been with us in the several runs of our Magandang Business Advice (MBA) on Marketing and Innopreneurship which we just did in Naga, Cebu, Davao, Pampanga. There is in fact another MBA we are doing with him slated on Oct. 12 in Manila.

Josiah has developed with us an exciting program flow for the YES November summit which will cover topics such as the Vision for Creativity and Innovation among Entrepreneurs, Creativity and Innovation for the Greater Good, 10 Building Blocks on Innovation, Innovating Your Value Proposition to Target Underserved Market, Innovating Your Channel for Critical Mass, Innovating Your Customer Bonding Strategy via Leveraging Your Brand, Innovating Operations to Improve Affordability, Innovating Processes for Greater Customer Satisfaction, Innovating Value Chain Partnership. We are also bringing in with the support the British Embassy, a prominent British entrepreneur who will provide business model innovations towards a sustainable social enterprise.

We expect around 2,000 attendees as we open the invitation to all entrepreneurs, SMEs and the youth, who will surely get the needed foundation on how to develop and constantly inject innovations in its culture, operations and product offerings to keep it on the growth track. We in business face constant challenges, but discovering new ways of doing things and finding business solutions through innovations always keep our hopes alive. Sessions like the one in the YES on Creativity and innovation on Nov. 19, will definitely be worthwhile.

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Talking of innovations, this time in the IT world, lead me to congratulate one of our Go Negosyo panelists in last January’s Technopreneur Summit, Winston Damarillo, for the success of Acaleph’s launching last month. Acaleph provides high quality digital storage and management of big data of businesses. Its primary objective is to assist the small medium enterprises in managing and storing their data with a highly differentiated IT platform that will accelerate transformation to a fully digital enterprise.

Like Dado Banatao, Winston is one of the successful Filipino technopreneurs in Silicon Valley who has a strong track record in  building successful technology businesses such as Gluecode Software, Logicblaze, and Webtide.

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A few weeks ago, the Go Negosyo team led by executive director Mon Lopez met with Lucban, Quezon Mayor Oli Dator and Vice Mayor Ayelah Deveza.  As a follow-through to last year’s youth entrepreneurship summit that we did in South Luzon through South Luzon State University (SLSU), we are planning also a big entrepreneurship summit and seminar for the micro and small entrepreneurs in the area. This time, we will reach out to the micro entrepreneurs, farmer cooperatives, the out-of-school youth, the single-parents group and other marginalized sectors in the area. The new leaders have been upbeat in creating a climate of progressive entrepreneurship. This is just a series of seminars we shall be working in the Quezon area as Governor Jay Suarez and I have explored the mounting of a number of activities to empower the micro entrepreneurs in their province.

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We would like to invite everyone again to the October 2-5 Social Entrepreneurship Summit 2013 at The Enchanted Farm in Angat, Bulacan. As mentioned in our last column, this summit is being organized by the Gawad Kalinga team of Tony Meloto together with Senator Bam Aquino. I will attend the first day to share some insights on entrepreneurship and how we can assist in nation-building through social businesses. Interested social entrepreneurs will see a lot of social enterprise models and ideas that may interest them since I understand that the Enchanted Farm presents a good showcase of these businesses that can help communities while running the business.

The Association of Filipino Franchisers, Inc.(AFFI) is also organizing the 12th Filipino Franchise Show this Oct. 4 – 7 at the World Trade Center Manila and we would also encourage all those seeking tried and tested franchise concepts to  participate in the expo. A lot of negosyo seminars will also be given, and Go Negosyo will handle a segment in the program.

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You may contact me at [email protected].