Innovation

With China’s muscle-flexing in its surrounding seas, our government has embarked on a military modernization program through the quickest route possible: buying ships, aircraft and other hardware.

Technology transfer and continued tech support should go with such purchases but these are not guaranteed, especially if the products are made in USA.

While the government is undertaking what by regional standards is a modest modernization program, policymakers should also look at long-term measures to improve our external defense capability without relying heavily on outside help.

The best long-term measure is investing in developing our own military equipment. We’re not inventing the wheel so research and development in this area shouldn’t prove too costly. The technology is there; we just have to produce our own version. We’re not aiming for stealth capability and we’re not going to war; we just need ships and aircraft that can monitor and protect Philippine territory. We just need credible defense capability befitting a truly independent republic.

Surely Pinoys are not lacking in innovation. Recently an organization of scientists proposed an “Inventor of the Year” award to encourage innovation and support for R&D.

Many Pinoys are unaware that a Filipino pediatrician, Fe del Mundo, not only became the first woman to study in Harvard University’s School of Medicine but was also credited for the invention of the incubator. The yo-yo as we know it, marketed worldwide by the Americans, was developed by an Ilocano who relocated to California, Pedro Flores. A Pinoy aware of his compatriots’ love for sing-along, Roberto del Rosario (of the clan that gave us Trebel pianos) also produced the karaoke machine.

At this point in our national development, we can turn a tendency to settle for being copycats into an asset. Our inventors can build on existing technology and sound science by tweaking existing products to come up with Pinoy versions.

The Japanese and now the Koreans and Indians have done it with motor vehicles, consumer electronics and, yes, military hardware. The Chinese are racing to catch up.

Surely we have enough innovators who can do the same for the Philippines. With sufficient support for R&D, we should be able to produce our own machinery for many industries and develop a vibrant local pharmaceutical sector like the Indians.

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Encouraging innovation ideally starts early in life. In my recent trip to Mexico I visited the Monterrey Institute of Technology, which has an “Innovaction Gym” where students’ ideas can incubate.

Silicon Valley types will be right at home in that place. The “gym” is strewn with colorful hammocks, mattresses and tents; students can spend the night in the gym as they toss around ideas.

Seats of different heights are arranged around couches and tables. A professor explained that they have found that students think differently in different rest positions.

Colorful fake butterflies flutter from the ceiling. One message declares: “Our teachers create hurricanes with students.”

There are “Skype booths” that serve as students’ “windows to the world” as well as a “sparring room” that has a real punching bag. A “forensics lab” sits next to the “Frankie lab” (for Frankenstein the monster).

On one glass pane in a professor’s room a message was scrawled in colored chalk: “The important thing is not to find the right answer but to ask the right questions.”

Integrating business with science and technology, private companies can hire youthful brains in Monterrey Tech for product development. Proposals are evaluated based on feasibility, viability and desirability. An app allows students to check if they are not stealing others’ work and violating intellectual property rights.

Coca-Cola FEMSA, Coke’s largest franchise bottler, funds a biotech center in the institute that specializes in biopharmaceuticals, biotechnology, biobusiness and nutrigenomics – a field that includes the development of fortified foods and food stabilizers. The center is currently undertaking R&D to produce healthier sweeteners, extracts from broccoli sprouts to reduce cholesterol, and synthetic bacteria to purify water.

FEMSA’s Research Center for Protein Development is rolling out a new product that will boost protein content in foods including meat, dairy and carbohydrates – a boon to protein-deficient people in developing countries.

Expanding its reach, the center is even developing stem cells against Lou Gehrig’s Disease as well as a treatment to program bacteria to fight cancer cells.

Monterrey Tech has a list of its undergraduates, who come from several countries. There’s only one from the Philippines, identified as Rosemarie Polican Santillan. After spending time in the Innovaction Gym, perhaps one day Santillan will do her country proud and come up with a noteworthy invention.

Our government, with its limited resources, can also tap the private sector for support in R&D. Never mind cutting-edge S&T to look for a cancer cure; we can aim much lower, initially to produce our own versions of things we badly need, such as defense hardware.

For example, since no one seems to be interested in shutting down the illegal gun manufacturing shops in Danao, Cebu, perhaps they can be turned into legit operations, with assistance from the private sector, to produce weapons for the police and military. There must be proper quality control.

Necessity, it is said, is the mother of invention. With all the necessities in Pinoy life, there should be enough impetus for local innovation. What it needs is solid support.