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Founders, funders, and bayanihan in the fourth industrial revolution

By Santiago J. Arnaiz, SparkUp Editor

WHEN Keller Rinaudo founded his drone-based delivery start-up Zipline, it was with the lofty dream of building “an instant, automated logistics system for the planet.” It was 2014 and, at the time, AI-powered robots were commonplace only in the warehouses of the world’s tech giants: Alibaba, Amazon, and the like. But Mr. Rinaudo felt that the technologies of the future were being wasted on delivering tennis shoes and pizza. Instead, he believed “the long-term impact of that technology is providing universal healthcare to every person on the planet.”

Today, Mr. Rinaudo oversees the largest commercial autonomous logistics system in the world, delivering emergency medical supplies and relief packages to remote communities. Like his drones, Mr. Rinaudo is constantly travelling to far flung regions, finding new ways to partner with local governments and private institutions, taking his futuristic solution to as many places as possible.

“People in Rwanda today say ‘Yeah, of course we have drones that deliver blood. How else would you solve that problem?’” Mr. Rinaudo said. “It’s amazing how fast it goes from science fiction to totally boring.”

While the team is headquartered in California, Zipline’s operations are halfway across the world in Rwanda, Ghana, and — following a meeting last month with the Department of Health and Department of National Defense — the Philippines.

It’s across the Philippine archipelago that Mr. Rinaudo believes Zipline will truly come into fruition as a game-changer in autonomous logistics. With their drones, Zipline will be able to send payloads of vital cargo across various bodies of water, instantly connecting remote islands otherwise considered unreachable in emergency situations.

The Philippines is a vast country, with an equally vast array of social ills, borne out of generations of band-aid solutions and neglect. Infrastructure gaps, wealth inequality, disproportionate allocation of private and public funding — all these and more constitute a nation rife with complex, interlocking problems.

But where there are problems, there are also opportunities. Just as Zipline hopes to address Philippine infrastructure gaps with artificial intelligence and robotics, the fourth industrial revolution presents a nearly bottomless toolkit with which enterprising firms might tackle the issues that plague our country.

And it’s in that intersection of emerging technologies and societal need that we’re seeing the rise of a new breed of enterprising pioneers: Start-ups.

LEADING THE CHARGE
As of 2017, Impact Hub Manila CEO Report 2018 found that Metro Manila alone was home to over 500 registered start-ups. In the same year, global investors funneled over $100 million into Philippine start-ups, outpacing the growth of the community’s Singaporean and Indonesian counterparts.

Since then, the local ecosystem ballooned, with more than half the current roster of start-ups founded in the last two years. Earlier this year, global business ranking report Start-upBlink found that the Philippine start-up ecosystem jumped up 16 slots to 54 out of 100 countries surveyed.

Today we see dozens of case studies of independent, homegrown companies that have leveraged their innovative business models to raise significant institutional funding, create thousands of new jobs, and quickly achieve liquidity.

Coins.ph, a regional success story that made headlines after its $72 million acquisition by Indonesian tech giant Go-Jek, drew massive support by allowing users to invest in cryptocurrencies. FlySpaces, another homegrown company, is now Southeast Asia’s leading provider of serviced office and co-working spaces, with locations all over the region. Similarly, Edukasyon.ph is now one of the fastest growing ASEAN-based education technology start-ups, with over one million monthly users covering more than 40 percent of Filipino students with internet access.

“The Philippines has incredible potential to be a leading start-up hub,” said Katrina Chan, Director of QBO Innovation Hub, a public-private initiative supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Trade and Industry, IdeaSpace, and J.P. Morgan. “We are starting to see more elements come into place — increased investment activity, growing public -private support, rising interest in entrepreneurship — which makes me believe that the Philippines can live up to its promise and… rival the biggest names in the region in the next few years.”

Whether homegrown or foreign, start-ups are thriving in the Philippines and, in turn, the community is helping the Philippines thrive. But in order to understand how to best bolster that growth, it’s important to first understand what exactly that community looks like.

THE START-UP ECOSYSTEM
Pop culture is saturated with hero stories of visionaries reshaping entire industries with their revolutionary ideas. One imagines the founder leading a scrappy team of developers, bootstrapping their projects out of garages and studio apartments. While the reality of start-ups in the Philippines is not nearly as romantic, it is, at least, infinitely more interesting.

Today, there are at least 20 major incubators and accelerators offering mentorship and seed funding opportunities to start-ups in metropolitan cities across the country. Additionally, there are at least 30 angel investor and venture capitalist groups actively seeking new Filipino start-ups to fund and help scale.

And it doesn’t stop there. Many schools have launched their own business accelerator programs, to complement their management and entrepreneurship curriculums. Institutions like Ateneo de Manila University and the Asian Institute of Management boast robust accelerators, while modern schools like MINT College connect their students to the start-up world through partnerships with global networks like Impact Hub.

As with any major societal venture, the government plays a key role in creating the scaffolding against which entirely new industries are being built. Earlier this year in May, the Senate passed on third and final reading the Innovative Start-up Act, which aims to create a more conducive environment for start-ups to grow in the country.

“These are start-ups that provide unique and relevant solutions to our problems, from daily hassles, like finding a taxi during rush hour, to improving the delivery of healthcare, providing support for our farmers, and addressing unemployment,” said Senator Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV, the bill’s primary author. Under this act, start-up founders can expect tax breaks and expedited processes for securing business permits and certifications.

According to the Senate, the measure also includes a provision for the establishment of a P10 billion “Innovative Start-up Venture Fund” that entrepreneurs can apply for through the Department of Science and Technology.

Elsewhere in the executive branch, start-ups have found even more direct partners in offices such as the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Information and Communications Technology. Through their affiliate agencies both national and local, these departments have created innovation centers, competitions, workshop programs, and grassroots projects all directed towards equipping Filipinos with the tools needed to respond to the nation’s needs through entrepreneurship.

A COMMUNITY EFFORT
While the self-organizing founders of the local start-up scene have benefited greatly from academic and government support, it’s in strategic and funding partnerships with corporations that many of these founders have been able to take their businesses to the next level.

“Corporations really want to work with start-ups,” said Minette Navarete, vice chairman and president of Kickstart Ventures. Kickstart Ventures is one of the country’s leading venture capital firms, a subsidiary of Globe Telecom backed by Ayala Corporation and SingTel.

According to Ms. Navarete, large corporations benefit from the creativity and excitement that start-ups bring to the table. Whereas corporations like Globe Telecom and Ayala have the resources to fund large ventures, start-ups are agile enough to develop and scale solutions at a pace traditional firms just can’t keep up with. Far from the narrative of disruptor versus disrupted, corporations in the Philippines play a vital role in creating spaces for start-ups to flourish.

Building the Philippine start-up community is a tripartite effort that calls on the government, the academe, and private institutions across the spectrum to work together in unprecedented new ways. To pull that off requires no shortage of creativity and open-mindedness — a paradigm shift towards collaboration that, if properly structured, could see not only the start-up community, but the nation as a whole, flourish.

In choosing to expand into the Philippines, Zipline’s founder Keller Rinaudo echoed what many start-ups have already known about the local ecosystem. It’s not just the wealth of opportunity that firms like his can capitalize on, but the spirit of collaboration that permeates every facet of the local start-up community.

With the government’s scaffolding of legislative and executive support, the academe’s thrust towards equipping the next generation of business leaders with the business and tech know-how to thrive, and the entrepreneurial spirit that drives Filipino founders forward into the fourth industrial revolution, it’s no wonder why firms across the globe have their eyes on the Philippines.

“Many people think the next big technological applications of our time will come out of places like Japan or the United States,” Zipline’s Mr. Rinaudo said. “But it’s precisely the [countries] that embrace innovation that end up leapfrogging ahead of even developed nations.”

Industry 4.0 and the future of telecommunications

By Bjorn Biel M. Beltran, Special Features Writer

GOING from the age of homing pigeons and the telegraph to the age of virtually instant face-to-face interaction in the span of a century, there is perhaps no better symbol of technology’s explosive growth in the information age than telecommunications.

Where there was once slowness and inefficiency in sending and receiving messages, now there is a constant upgrading of fast and and secure communication. Companies like Apple pride themselves on the security and privacy of their messaging apps, while the ubiquity of other services ensure that anyone can be contacted instantly anytime, anywhere with an internet connection, even astronauts orbiting the earth on the International Space Station.

“Technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) companies have been at the epicenter of the change wrought by Industry 4.0. They have pioneered many of the smart technologies and high-speed connectivity at its core, making digital innovation possible,” international services firm Deloitte wrote in a report on its website.

With so many technologies proliferating, it is difficult to imagine what the future of telecommunications will look like at the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. How much more can technology improve from the information age, with its immense economic and sociopolitical impact?

Let us count the ways.

THE 5G WORLD
Mobile internet has virtually transformed all facets of contemporary life. Its effects can be felt in the entertainment industry with the advent of streaming audio and video, the financial sector with fintech and mobile banking apps, food service through online food delivery, and transportation in the form of ride-hailing apps like Uber and Grab.

In an always-online world, the demand for faster, more affordable, more convenient internet services grows along with it. Enter 5G technology.

The International Mobile Telecommunications-2020 (IMT-2020 Standard), the set of standards and requirements issued by The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), set the course for the developing technology in the coming year. The rollout of 5G is expected to connect people, things, data, applications, transport systems, and cities in smart-networked communication environments through a network capable of supporting a huge amount of data much faster, more reliably, on an extremely large number of devices, and processing very high volumes of data with minimal delay.

Through 5G, innovative applications such as smart homes and buildings, smart cities, 3D video, work and play in the cloud, remote medical surgery, virtual and augmented reality, and massive machine-to-machine communications for industry automation and self-driving cars are not only much more feasible but much easier. Particularly after such technologies were challenged by the limitations of 3G and 4G networks.

According to the ITU, 5G technology promises to accelerate the achievement of all of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), from affordable and clean energy to zero hunger.

“Expectations of 5G are high, with many assuming it will deliver a transformative promised land — an improved end-user experience, new applications, new business models and new services riding swiftly on the back of gigabit speeds, improved network performance and reliability,” the ITU wrote in its Setting the Scene for 5G: Opportunities & Challenges report.

“5G networks and services, standing as they do on the shoulders of successful 2G, 3G and 4G mobile networks, are forecast by independent economic studies to deliver very significant economic gains.”

In the Philippines, the technology is on its way with Globe Telecom, Inc.’s launch of its fixed service Air Fiber 5G, making it the first provider to launch a 5G-powered service in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, and third in Asia after South Korea and Japan.

A NEW KIND OF INTERNET
An interconnected society in the era of 5G may enable an even bigger role for the technologies currently dominating tech. The cloud, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence, Deloitte wrote, are expected to have the largest impact on telecommunications organizations over the next five years as emerging specialized technologies — such as quantum computing and nanotechnology — loom over the horizon.

“Cloud, IoT, AI, and mobile technologies are vital parts of the networked physical-digital universe, helping organizations collect and process vast volumes of data and become smarter digital enterprises. IoT-enabled sensors take measurements and generate streams of data. Mobile technologies have an important role to play, too,” Deloitte wrote in its report.

“Smartphones, tablets, and wearable devices can function as sensors, collecting and sending diverse data such as location, acceleration, images, video, activity information, and even health measurements like heart rate and blood sugar. And mobile technologies provide connectivity — not just for phones but for devices such as manufacturing equipment, home appliances, office whiteboards, wearables, and medical tablets.”

The Internet of Things, particularly, can open the door to limitless possibilities. As the convergence of multiple technologies, including real-time analytics, machine learning, commodity sensors, and embedded systems, IoT can foster further innovation in the smart ecosystem space, particularly in the development of smart homes, buildings, and cities.

Through embedded sensors, artificial intelligence, machine-to-machine communication, and real-time analytics, IoT can potentially, for instance, detect when your smart car is running low on fuel or is in need of repair, automatically and autonomously send it to a refueling station, show you routes to the nearest service station, or even contact your manufacturer to send a mechanic — all without any human input. Such ecosystems could be expanded to smart cities with massive network infrastructures, monitoring entire transport systems and utility grids, with machines communicating with each other through a vast network to ensure efficiency, security, comfort, and convenience.

“The connected universe is getting smarter, with developers infusing AI capabilities such as machine learning into IoT platforms and applications, into cloud services, and even into physical devices at ‘the edge’ of the network. AI and IoT are a synergistic pair. [The International Data Corp.] predicts that by 2019, “all effective” IoT efforts will make use of AI, since data alone has limited value unless it’s mined for insight,” Deloitte added.

“Conversely, AI thrives upon volumes of data: As AI systems ingest new data and scenarios, they evolve and improve over time, inferring new knowledge. A virtuous cycle emerges: Connected devices and systems generate data, and that data is analyzed for insights that are piped back into the systems to drive informed decision-making and intelligent, autonomous action.”

The value that this kind of technology can deliver to enterprises and customers is immense, with IoT and mobile technology enabling completely new revenue streams and service-based delivery models, as well as more efficient operations. The role of AI, by extension, will become an integral part of business operations, essential for better decision making and the development of smarter products. Cloud computing, which before was utilized chiefly for the purpose of lowering costs and increasing efficiency, can now be used to rapidly innovate products and services, build new business models, and reinvent customer relationships.

ON THE BORDERS OF NEW REALITIES
Just like when over the top (OTT) media services, livestreaming services like Spotify and Netflix, revolutionized the entertainment industry, augmented and virtual reality is predicted to rise in a more interconnected world.

The World Economic Forum projects simulated environments generated by AR and VR technologies to transform a variety of industries, from straightforward applications like video games and virtual tourism to medical research and journalism.

Through virtual reality headsets or multi-projected environments to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that simulate a user’s physical presence in a virtual environment, VR systems can simulate detailed maps of the cells in a cancer tumor that can be explored and analyzed, or else, as with the New York Times’ VR mobile app, experience “a new kind of video that gives you a sense of depth in every direction so you feel like you’re actually there.”

Simulated reality, however, poses new and uniquely fraught challenges to society at large.

For instance, it is no secret to Filipinos that online gambling sites and virtual casinos have sparked an explosive influx in Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs). Chinese nationals seeking workarounds for China’s gambling ban have flocked to burgeoning gambling hubs in the Philippines, prompting an increase in Chinese workers to cater to them and driving up residential and office property prices in the process. The demand is expected to drive gambling revenue in the Philippines to $4.1 billion this year, up from just over $1 billion in 2016, according to the government.

Proxy betting, a practice that uses computer tablets and headsets to communicate with gamblers watching games from abroad on cameras, contributes a sizeable chunk to these numbers. Interestingly, the practice is outlawed in most countries because of the anonymous nature of the remote gambling, but it is legal in the Philippines.

That so much money can be found in offering a method of circumventing national law speaks to how much potential a purely digital world far removed from national boundaries and regulations can offer. Imagine how emergent technology can play a part in all of that, for better or for worse.

Transformation toward sustainability

By Mark Louis F. Ferrolino, Special Features Writer

A BUSINESS-AS-USUAL approach can no longer get the job done. Companies need to recognize sustainability as part of their business model to survive and thrive.

According to Bonar Laureto, executive director of the Philippine Business for the Environment, a non-profit organization that supports sustainability management initiatives, a sustainable company needs to be configured to conduct business ethically, managing the impact of its existence, deliver value to society, and be future-ready.

“For a business to be called sustainable, all of these have to be present. If you’re missing one of these, it will collapse, it can harm your business. If you’re missing corporate governance, for instance, you can go in a certain direction that could bring about your demise. All of these things are non-negotiable. You can’t just talk about sustainability from one lens,” Mr. Laureto told BusinessWorld in an interview.

Over the past decades, several studies have shown that integrating sustainability practices in business operations provide significant benefits. These include a higher chance of attracting investors and engaging talent, according to Mr. Laureto.

Many investors today are using environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics to evaluate companies in which they might want to invest. These are sets of standards that consider how a certain company performs as a steward of nature, how it manages relationships with its stakeholders, and how it deals with executive pay, audits, internal controls and shareholder rights, among others.

According to global investment manager Schroders, the volume of passive strategies using ESG metrics and exclusions as stand-alone investment criteria has surged in recent years. BlackRock also projects that global ESG exchange-traded fund assets will rise to more than $400 billion by 2028 from $25 billion in 2018.

Meanwhile, companies that focus on sustainability practices are also believed to have better employee engagement, as validated by several studies. A survey by a blockchain-based clean energy platform Swytch, for instance, revealed that employees of all generations seek companies that have programs set in place to be more sustainable.

In terms of employee retention, the survey showed that nearly 70% of the respondents believe that a strong sustainability plan will affect their decision to stay with a company for the long term. In fact, about 30% have left a company due to its lack of a corporate sustainability agenda.

“Globally, those companies that are publishing sustainability reports are actually increasing over the years. A lot of companies are making these data available because it’s about attracting the right investors and the right talent,” Mr. Laureto said.

In the Philippines, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) now requires publicly-listed companies (PLCs) to submit their sustainability reports starting next year.

With the issuance of the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, the SEC, according to its Chairperson Emilio B. Aquino, has high hopes that PLCs will be made aware of sustainability and make it a part of their priorities.

Mr. Laureto said this measure should not be perceived as an additional reporting burden. “[If] you want to succeed in the Philippine market, [if you] want your company more competitive, you disclose your ESG performance because investors are looking for these,” he said.

THE EPITOME OF SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
A Filipino company that actively embodies sustainable practices in its operations is Energy Development Corp. (EDC), a world leader in geothermal technology and the country’s largest 100% renewable energy company. EDC has a long history of pioneering sustainable practices, and is committed to improving people’s lives by ensuring that its businesses grow, along with the environment, its employees, and other stakeholders.

Last year, EDC generated economic value of P40.8 billion, with 58% or P23.7 billion distributed to the economy through operating spending, employee wages and benefits, payments to capital providers, taxes, and community investment.

To manage and reduce the environmental impact of its operations, EDC continues to monitor and manage its greenhouse gas emissions and other significant air pollutants, as well as its waste generation and water withdrawal. Through one of its environmental stewardship programs, BINHI Greening Legacy, EDC was able to restore denuded forests, identify, collect and start propagating 96 threatened native tree species, and protect biodiversity.

This initiative captures 3.96 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, and EDC’s effective emissions management mechanisms, has allowed the company to maintain its carbon-negative status, one that absorbs and sequesters more carbon than it produces based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) norms.

Apart from caring for the environment, EDC has likewise implemented several corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs which aim to empower various stakeholders and partner communities toward becoming proactive agents of their own development. Every year, EDC’s strategic CSR programs benefit around 44,496 individuals from 20,000 households in 47 primary partner barangays across all areas where it operates.

The company also aligns its efforts with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations as a general framework to end poverty, protect the planet, and achieve prosperity for all. EDC’s primary focus has always been to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all (SDG 7). In the process, the company has also been promoting gender equality (SDG 5); decent work and economic growth (SDG 8); industry, innovation, and infrastructure (SDG 9); responsible consumption and production (SDG 12); climate action (SDG 13); and life on land (SDG 15).

Through its various CSR efforts, EDC, on the other hand, has been contributing to the fight against hunger and poverty (SDGs 1-2); ensuring access to clean water and sanitation (SDG 6); enhancing good health and well-being (SDG 3); and providing access to quality education without discrimination (SDG 4).

However, the company’s journey to being sustainable doesn’t end here. As Mr. Laureto said, sustainability is not a point but a journey.

“There’s no such thing as a sustainable state because a sustainable business model means a company that continually improves on its sustainability performance,” he said. “It will never end.”

EDC said it strives to keep finding ways to provide clean, renewable, reliable power through the geothermal energy it has been specializing in for almost 40 years, and works to also enhance its impact on the environment and on the communities that it serves.

DRIVING FORCES LEADING THE WAY TO SUSTAINABILITY
More and more companies are making the leap to operate in a more sustainable way; it is fast becoming a strategic imperative rather than an option.

The increasing threat of climate change is pushing companies to transition away from business as usual. As Mr. Laureto said, the public is more critical about what firms are doing because it suffers the consequences in the form of more severe natural hazards caused by changing climate.

“In the past, being a good businessman was easier. You just have to sell the products to your customers, get paid for it, make profits, and do the cycle again. Nobody cared about whether you were polluting the river, whether you have so many plastic wrappers and packaging going into the ocean, nobody cared about that. [But] the world today has changed. The stakeholders are very much informed that if you do something bad to the environment or to the stakeholders, social media will pick up, [and] it will destroy you,” Mr. Laureto said.

According to EDC, if carbon emissions are not curbed, 74% of the world’s population and 47% of its land area will be exposed to lethal temperatures by 2100.

“With every passing year, it’s becoming increasingly tougher to deny that our climate is changing faster than previously imagined due to human activity,” EDC Chairman and CEO Federico R. Lopez said in the company’s 2018 Performance Report.

He noted that human activity is warming the Earth 5,000 times faster than the most rapid natural warming occurrence in the past, and species are going extinct faster than at any period in geologic history.

“We urgently need to overhaul how we relate with the Earth if we want to keep it habitable for humans in the decades to come. We don’t have a choice,” Mr. Lopez said.

In addition to climate change, other forces that are driving companies to incorporate sustainability as part of their strategy, as identified by Mr. Laureto, include the entry of younger generations into the workforce demanding corporate sustainability, the growing number of investors who use ESG metrics, the increasing resource scarcity, and the enactment of some government regulations that affect how businesses operate.

INDUSTRY 4.0 AS ENABLER OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Now that the most recent industrial age, better known as Industry 4.0, is starting to unfold, emerging opportunities toward sustainable development and sustainability are being identified.

“There’s a lot of application to how enterprises can become sustainable with the application of technology brought by Industry 4.0,” Mr. Laureto said.

In agriculture, for instance, Internet of Things (IoT) solutions can help farmers enhance productivity and efficiency. With the help of sensors, farmers can determine what parts of the land have poor nutrients and identify which type of fertilizer they should apply.

“That reduces the cost of the farmers, and it absolutely could increase productivity,” Mr. Laureto said. “Less expense, less environmental impact.”

Mr. Laureto also said the application of technologies brought about by Industry 4.0 is not limited to enhancing sustainable operations across diverse industries but also in addressing key social issues, including poverty, hunger, and access to clean water and health care services.

Despite the benefits of being a sustainable business, some firms are still reluctant to make strong commitments to sustainability. One main reason for this, according to Mr. Laureto, is that it comes with upfront costs.

“The perspective of sustainability as a cost rather sustainability as an investment is one of the biggest barriers,” he said. “There’s an upfront cost to it, unless the managers see it through a long-term point of view.”

The existence of some government policies and regulations also restrict firms from embracing sustainability practices. Citing an example, Mr. Laureto said: “Companies want to minimize the use of packaging in general by putting up refilling stations, [but] FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has a policy against refilling.”

“The objective of reducing waste and the investment that the company will make is hindered by the policy,” he added.

In this case, the government, he said, should create an enabling policy which will remove the barriers that prevent companies from incorporating sustainable practices in their operations.

“Enabling policy is critical so that private sector can come in. Government doesn’t have to do anything for the private sector, except that they make doing business easy and they enable them to come in, enable them to invest, remove the barriers,” Mr. Laureto said.

By and large, sustainability is not only a matter of strategy for businesses to stay relevant and achieve long-term growth — it is for everyone — to improve the life of every member of society. As Mr. Laureto puts it: There’s no economy to speak about without sustainable development.

“Our economic activities and the things that we do are highly dependent on maintaining natural capital and ensuring that resources are used wisely,” he said.

Generation Z and the increasingly automated work environment

A GROWING NUMBER of members of Generation Z, born roughly between the mid-1990s and early to mid-2010s, is entering the workforce. For businesses, it’s becoming increasingly important to get a good grasp of what makes these young people tick, in order to attract, onboard, and retain them.

One of the more recent attempts to understand this cohort was made by local firm Acumen Brand Strategy Consultants. In 2018, Acumen conducted a study involving hundreds of participants from two digital generations: Generation Z, also known as the centennials; and Generation Y, the millennials. Though mistakenly lumped with the millennials, centennials are a distinct group.

In May at the BusinessWorld Economic Forum 2019, Pauline Fermin, managing director of Acumen, presented some of the study’s key findings. “Digital devices, digital media and the Internet are fully integrated into their lives and even their definition of being,” she said. The formative years of many Gen Zers were shaped by the rapid digital evolution in the 2000s that brought about smartphones and social media, among other innovations. They were exposed to and began using these technologies at a young age.

Unsurprisingly, all the Gen Z participants of the study said they use the Internet. A majority of them use it for more than four hours a day. Meanwhile, 45% said they get bored when they’re offline. On social media, the study found, the top accounts Gen Zers follow are those of their friends, family, celebrities and companies. Thirty-two percent of the Gen Z participants want their followers and/or friends on social media to react immediately to anything they share.

“The principles of technology are now basic expectations when it comes to life: high speed, high availability, constant accessibility and human-optimized machines, convenient, easy, seamless,” Ms. Fermin said. Curiously, she noted that Gen Zers recognize that they have weaknesses in terms of communication and interpersonal skills. Some 38% of the centennial participants in the Acumen study said they can express themselves better online than in person.

Gen Zers are highly in touch with everything — good and bad — that’s happening around them. “Technology is their visa,” Ms. Fermin said. These people also “find anchor in purpose and authenticity.” Ms. Fermin said, “They seek meaning beyond what’s [on] the surface. They’re disillusioned when it comes to false information or empty words.”

Drawing on its study’s findings, Acumen came up with ways for businesses to effectively engage centennials. “As leaders, if we want to attract, manage, retain and draw out their full potential, we must first strive to have intergenerational understanding within the work environment,” Ms. Fermin said. In addition, when teaching and coaching, “leaders will have to adapt to their worldview and baseline in order… to effectively build the necessary on-the-job capabilities,” Ms. Fermin said.

Acumen also recommends that businesses be digitally enabled and their workflows re-configured. They ought to support work-life unity to retain Gen Z talent, too. Centennials, Ms. Fermin said, “expect seamless, frictionless fusion of personal passions, priorities and professional growth.”

Gen Zers are moving into the workplace at a time when businesses are embracing automation and artificial intelligence, which has raised fears about widespread job losses and questions about what skills new and old workers should learn to survive and thrive in an automated work environment. At the same BusinessWorld conference, Kristine Romano, Philippine managing partner of McKinsey & Co., said artificial intelligence and automation will change how we work.

In her presentation, she noted that some activities are more automatable than others. For instance, 78% of predictable physical work (e.g. welding and soldering on an assembly line and packaging objects) is automatable, while only 25% of unpredictable physical work (e.g. construction and raising outdoor animals) is automatable. Work activities that are less susceptible to automation include ones that involve stakeholder interaction, applying expertise and managing others. “On average, six out of 10 jobs have at least 30% of work activities that can be automated,” Ms. Romano said.

“Because so much of the tasks in the workplace will be automated, it becomes even more important for employees to hone their critical thinking and complex problem-solving skills,” as well as “[j]udgment and decision-making, creativity, ability to work with others, emotional intelligence — human skills and skills which for the moment humans are still better at than machines,” Rizalina Mantaring, president of the Management Association of the Philippines, told BusinessWorld in an e-mail.

For the vast majority of the centennials that are still studying, educational institutions play a critical role in helping them develop the skills they will need when they transition to an increasingly automated work environment. “Much of what we learn today will be obsolete in five years. Students should also be prepared for a lifetime of continuous learning, hence the most important thing students may get out of their education is to learn how to learn,” Ms. Mantaring said.

For the Gen Zers that have just entered the workforce and their co-workers that belong to older generations, it will be wise to invest in learning new skills. “The key is lifelong learning, to be able to cope as the world changes,” Ms. Mantaring said.

Ms. Mantaring said that companies will need to retrain their employees through programs that can be done in-house or in partnership with specialist or training institutions. But she noted that skills don’t get “baked in” until they are applied, so it will also be important for companies to provide their employees with opportunities to participate in projects or new initiatives. “Companies can help allay fears of job displacement by proactively retraining at-risk employees for new roles, although there is a limit to how many can be retrained and how much retraining can be done,” she added.

Even high-ranking people in any organization affected by automation will have to upskill. Ms. Mantaring, who also chairs Sun Life Financial Philippine Holding Co., Inc., said businesses of the future will need so-called “super managers” who are empathetic, skilled at mentoring, creative innovators and data-driven decision makers.

“Complex problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity and people management will perhaps be the most important skills as the routine administration work which makes up more than half a typical manager’s tasks will be left to machines. Business leaders need to be able to envision the future, and for this they need a deeper understanding of the technologies driving their businesses — artificial intelligence and data analytics are probably basic now. They need to be able to make that leap to see how technologies disrupting other industries can be applied to their own,” Ms. Mantaring said. – FATV

BPI pursues digital financial inclusion for Filipinos

Financial inclusion has long been a goal of the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI). But only recently has the Bank imbued this pursuit with a conspicuously digital twist.

BPI President and CEO Cezar P. Consing said BPI’s digital transformation efforts are founded on the idea of serving as many Filipinos as possible, including the underserved and unbanked Filipinos across the nation.

He said it is not only about ramping up investments in technology over the next few years, but, more significantly, increasing access to a wide range of financial products and services for every Filipino.

“Digitalization will make financial inclusion truly sustainable. Because digitalization reduces the cost to serve, it will allow us to bank a much greater proportion of the population, including those who may not have the means to leave a lot of money in their deposit accounts,” Consing added.

In this narrative of digital financial inclusion, BPI is increasing its focus on the lower-middle and lower-income consumer segments, which are growing at a very fast rate. These segments require affordable and accessible banking services. BPI uses its microfinance arm, BPI Direct BanKo, Inc. (BanKo), to serve them.

BanKo promotes financial inclusion primarily by serving self-employed micro-entrepreneurs (SEMEs). The Bank provides SEMEs with affordable and appropriate products and empowers its clients with financial advice and solutions that promote the growth and expansion of their enterprises.

Launched in 2017, BanKo makes loans to SEMEs, such as a stall operator in a public market, a beauty salon operator, and a neighborhood bakery. In its two years of operations, BanKo has already made over Php 4 billion in loans to almost 60,000 micro-entrepreneurs.

“BanKo has already made a significant impact on the lives of thousands of Filipino micro-entrepreneurs who previously had limited financing options. And BanKo was specifically created for that, for a greater purpose—to contribute to the nation’s prosperity by reaching out to a wider sector of the population,” said Mr. Consing.

BanKo will have 300 branches by end-2019. At the same time, BanKo will be the first digitalized bank in the country truly focused on financial inclusion, with a robust, secure, agile, and scalable cloud-enabled system that supports basic loans, deposits and mobile wallets, and which provides access to digital channels and payments. In addition, BanKo clients can access their accounts through 1,700 partner agencies.

“BanKo is being fitted with full digital capabilities. It will be a good example of the marriage of branch and digital, and the marriage of digitalization and financial inclusion,” he added.

Increased Engagement

For its clients, the bank’s digital transformation journey has already resulted in the launch of the next generation of the BPI Online and BPI Mobile app. The latest platforms allow for funds to be transferred via the use of a QR code and feature the use of one-time PINs for security. The growth of active users of BPI Online and BPI Mobile makes BPI the bank with possibly the highest digital adoption rate in terms of number of users.

“Digitalization will empower our clients, as they will be able to bank with us at any time wherever they may be, and in a manner that addresses their particular requirements,” said Consing.

But in promoting financial inclusion, the Bank also recognizes the fact that it also needs to include clients who would rather be served in the branches.

Hence, there is a need to balance the Bank’s presence in the digital space and its physical branches. So as the Bank continues to build its digital presence, it is also expanding its physical presence in a strategic way. This means increasing the branch count for BPI and its subsidiaries – BPI Family Savings Bank and BanKo.

“We want to reach more Filipinos. Digitalization will be the key to this initiative, but branch banking will remain essential,” Consing said.

Strengthening the legacy of BusinessWorld

By Bjorn Biel M. Beltran, Special Features Writer

AS THE WORLD continues to face disruption due to the dogged pace of innovation and technology, uncertainty has become the only certain thing in business. Longstanding institutions like the retail and hospitality industries are being transplanted by tech giants like Amazon and AirBnB, while industries such as media are struggling to adapt in an era of hyper-connectivity and information.

Yet, despite the turbulent landscape, BusinessWorld, the Philippines’ oldest business newspaper founded on July 27, 1987 by the late respected journalist Raul L. Locsin, has further cemented its position as the most trusted source of news, analysis, and insights by the country’s business community.

The newspaper has mostly achieved this by holding true to its purpose of serving its readers with reliable, accurate coverage of the news and issues relevant to the Philippine business landscape.

Miguel G. Belmonte, president and chief executive officer of BusinessWorld, said in an interview that the company made certain key adjustments to its business model to secure its development in this new environment. Much of how the newspaper delivered its reportage, however, remains the same.

“We have very high respect for our editorial team. We did not put any or much effort there or make changes in that department. But we realized, with all the challenges the newspaper and the publishing industry has been facing lately, for the past two years, that we really have to make some changes to our approach or strategy when it comes to advertising,” Mr. Belmonte said.

Since assuming control of the company, media conglomerate Mediaquest Holdings, Inc. issued a number of personnel and leadership changes aimed at ensuring BusinessWorld’s future. Such changes have been largely successful, with the past three years of the paper’s circulation showing positive profits.

“I think that’s one of the biggest accomplishments that we’ve managed here in BusinessWorld since joining the company. But the paper itself, the product itself still continues to be what I believe what it was already when we joined the company. So we’re just continuing its tradition and legacy [of integrity and excellence],” Mr. Belmonte added.

Through the expansion of its online component, www.bworldonline.com, and the launch of SparkUp, a platform catered towards startups and young entrepreneurs, BusinessWorld is also building on that legacy by delivering its signature brand of news and insight to new audiences.

Offering a new way to get insights from experts and to connect with the Philippine startup community, BusinessWorld aims to reach out to the generation shaped by the digital era through relevant targeted content in a multimedia platform designed for the next generation of businessmen.

Perhaps the most successful of the company’s new initiatives, however, is its introduction of the BusinessWorld Economic Forum, which is held annually since 2016.

“When we launched our Economic Forum three years ago, it has placed BusinessWorld at the forefront of the business community,” BusinessWorld Executive Vice-President Lucien C. Dy Tioco said in an interview.

Mr. Dy Tioco said that as emerging technology such as artificial intelligence, automation, blockchain, and the like continue to disrupt and transform the global landscape, there is a notable lack of authority with regards to how businesses should proceed into the future.

Digital transformation, he said, brought about a tidal wave that left everyone gasping for breath. Even before anyone could recover and find solid ground, a new wave of change comes in and sweeps them away again. A reputable, trustworthy voice is needed to serve as the buoy from which companies could get their bearings.

“Everyone is busy undergoing digital transformation. Everyone is still studying and trying to embrace what and how things have changed. And it’s not an easy route, going from how you were, from a traditional business to a digital one while trying to understand a digital audience. It’s like going back to the drawing board,” Mr. Dy Tioco said.

“Everyone is really on the learning curve, especially in the business community. The Economic Forum enables BusinessWorld to be at the forefront of that curve, because we come from a credible standpoint. So organizing events like this solidifies our status as a reliable business source, and increases our relevance in the changing landscape,” he added.

On its fourth year, the BusinessWorld Economic Forum has become the country’s most anticipated event for gathering thought leaders, industry experts, business executives, government policymakers, innovators, academicians, technology providers and more to discuss the myriad realities and concerns that are transforming the landscape of Philippine business. This year, more than 700 participants came together to explore the theme, “The Future of Business: Next-Wave Disruptions & Opportunities”, highlighting the promises and dangers of technology and how these will impact businesses over the next 10 years.

BusinessWorld has also expanded the reach of its conferences and fora by tackling important and timely topics through the BusinessWorld Cybersecurity Forum, the BusinessWorld Stock Market Roundtable, and the upcoming BusinessWorld Industry 4.0 Summit.

“That will be the thrust of BusinessWorld. In terms of trying to help the business community and the economy, how to ensure that in the next 10 years, as the newer technologies come in, we’ll do our best to equip everyone with all the relevant knowledge: about the newer technologies, the impact of these technologies, how it’s going to affect our daily lives, and how it’s really going to change how we do business,” Mr. Dy Tioco said.

Such initiatives serve only to strengthen the legacy of what BusinessWorld has built throughout its 32-year history. Since its foundation in 1987, BusinessWorld has clung to its tenets of integrity and quality in all its content. It is through those same pillars that the company aims to move forward into the future.

As the world continues to evolve into the digital age and people all over the globe are awash in a deluge of information, quality reporting only becomes more valuable. Roby A. Alampay, BusinessWorld’s editor-in-chief, once said in an interview that it is the job of the news industry to give the people the tools to analyze information and to help them understand their place, especially in today’s changing world.

In an age where Filipinos have become reliant on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter to get their news, newspapers have become secondary. As primary sources such as government websites and official proclamations are easily accessible, publications in the news industry must find new ways of providing value to their readers.

Mr. Alampay believes that in essence, the needs of BusinessWorld’s readers have not changed with the times. Despite the sweeping changes to how readers get their news, he said, the value of understanding business, economics, and even politics, has not faded away.

“[The changing times] force the news business to go more into analysis, to go more into understanding the bigger picture, to try and paint a bigger image for everyone,” he said.

“Facilitating more engagement between the audience, and the sources, and the news organization itself. That’s what’s changing all of us.”

Even with the introduction of events like the BusinessWorld Economic Forum, and the expansion of BusinessWorld’s online presence through its website and SparkUp, facing the future remains undoubtedly a challenging prospect. But it is a challenge that the company will gladly face.

“The challenge makes us excited, I always say,” Mr. Belmonte said. “The challenge is one of the things that makes our blood circulate. And otherwise, the job would be quite boring.”

SparkUp levels up

IN 2017, BusinessWorld Publishing Corporation launched SparkUp, a multimedia platform designed for business-minded millennials. Since then, SparkUp has established itself as a go-to source for stories about trending, novel and promising business concepts, fascinating profiles of start-ups and their founders, and tips for many young and would-be entrepreneurs.

SparkUp has now begun catering to a broader audience as a news and knowledge-sharing hub for the Philippine start-up community: millennials who run their own businesses or are planning to put up one to older start-up founders to investors and venture capitalists to the demographic cohort that comes after the millennials, also known as Generation Z.

This shift was driven to a large extent by the scant attention traditional media generally pays to the dynamic local start-up scene.

“The start-up community is an underserved community. While there are many start-ups springing from different parts of the country, there’s no singular platform they can refer to,” said Lucien C. Dy Tioco,BusinessWorld executive vice-president, who conceived SparkUp.

The initiative to reposition SparkUp came from its new editor, Santiago J. Arnaiz. “We realized that there was a big opportunity to be a hyperlocal publication that caters to Filipino start-ups,” he said.

Adopting the identity of “a news and knowledge-sharing hub for the Philippine start-up community,” he noted, “turns SparkUp into what it really was supposed to be, which is a platform to inspire, inform, and educate.”

Both the old and new readers of SparkUp can expect the same high quality of reportage that the platform has come to be known for. And though it’s become more start-up-focused, SparkUp continues to publish other business stories from which readers can draw insights they can apply in their own fields. One of the most read articles published on its Web site this year, “BTS’ Bangtan Universe and the power of transmedia storytelling,” is primarily about marketing.

And the diversity of forms that the published pieces take is something readers can always enjoy: hard news about the latest and the hottest in the start-up scene; profiles of noteworthy start-ups; listicles; long-form articles taking an in-depth look at weighty topics; explainers on trending and evergreen subjects; posts written by contributors; case studies, and more. (All the best articles published on SparkUp’s Web site are compiled into a print magazine that comes out biannually. The issues also contain exclusive content.)

The platform is also exploring the possibility of assembling comprehensive, searchable, and sortable databases of start-ups and their founders, investors and grant providers, which will no doubt come in handy for the casual and regular visitors to its Web site.

SparkUp will also be more video-centric, documenting start-up events and workshops in particular. “Video is a big part of our editorial push,” Mr. Arnaiz said. Podcasts are also being produced in collaboration with several SparkUp partners, he added.

In addition to publishing engaging stories, SparkUp stages events that bring together its readers and notable figures not only in the local start-up community but in other fields as well.

One of these events is the Spark Series, a string of seminars conducted in different universities in Metro Manila during an academic year. It features different industry experts who give students new insights into topics that matter to them. The theme for this year’s Spark Series is “Imagining the Future of Work.”

SparkUp Summit is the platform’s flagship event held annually. It’s a whole-day conference on ideation, entrepreneurship, and innovation, featuring motivational keynote speeches and thought-provoking and insightful panel discussions. The second SparkUp Summit will be held later this year.

A new series of intimate gatherings for the start-up community is being cooked up by SparkUp, and it’s called SparkUp Convos. “It will hook up start-ups with venture capitalists,” Mr. Dy Tioco said.

SparkUp Convos, which will soon be rolled out, is envisioned to be a platform where guests can have free-flowing conversations, share ideas, network, and start building partnerships and projects. Each session will be industry-specific; the first three sessions are about food and beverage, technology, and retail.

SparkUp, Mr. Arnaiz said, will try to keep growing as the needs of the local start-up community change. “We want to be as dynamic as the forces that drive the start-up community forward,” he said. “We’re trying to stay as close as possible to our community, have as many grassroots connections as possible, so that we feel the shift of needs as soon as it happens. We want to be able to respond. We want to be dynamic in that way.”

He continued, “Readers can look forward to a dynamic platform that’s up to date in terms of the news cycle, that is constantly innovating in terms of ways it can educate and share knowledge.” — FATV

Chronicling the activity of the corporate sector

By Adrian Paul B. Conoza, Special Features Writer

STATISTICS are not merely numbers. At BusinessWorld, the country’s leading business daily, statistics provide further insights into economic trends and conditions, making them a vital content of the paper.

BusinessWorld diligently fulfills the rigorous task of gathering data and interpreting them in light of the business scene. One of the ways in which the paper does this is through the BusinessWorld Top 1000 Corporations in the Philippines magazine, which has been tracking the movement of the Philippine corporate sector for more than three decades.

Leo Jaymar G. Uy, head of BusinessWorld’s research department, said that aside from ranking the country’s biggest firms by their latest annual gross revenues, the Top 1000 also provides financial information about these firms. “These include balance sheet (assets, liabilities, equity) and income statement items (revenue, expenditures, net income/loss); as well as financial ratios such as returns on equity and assets, total asset turnover, profit margin, and debt-to-equity ratio, among others,” Mr. Uy said.

Filing the Top 1000 list is a result of a rigorous methodology BusinessWorld undertakes. “We are not only looking at how much gross revenue a company generates. That’s the easy part,” Mr. Uy explained. “The challenging part is identifying based on our guide which items in one’s financial statement make up a firm’s income from primary sources or other income, which items count as short-term and long-term assets, liabilities, and equity, et cetera. And we do this in a matter of a few months. Imagine doing the same thing to 1000+ companies.”

The Top 1000 also lists corporations who entered or re-entered the list as well as those who were taken off the list. It compares companies according to their respective industries through its “How Competitors Compare” table. It also highlights upward and downward movers, top profit makers, and top loss makers.

In addition, the magazine has tabular rankings of government-owned and controlled corporations, exporters, multinationals, and listed companies. It also has a separate ranking of conglomerates “based on consolidated financial statements.”

Furthermore, the Top 1000 discusses the country’s economic condition through sectoral snapshots and feature stories, putting context into the main tables of the annual report.

All these components, compiled in one comprehensive volume, make Top 1000 a highly regarded publication that the industry looks forward to every year.

“Similar to how a financial statement is used to evaluate a firm’s financial health and earnings performance, the Top 1000 looks at how the Philippine corporate sector performed during the latest fiscal year,” Mr. Uy said. “This is important as the Top 1000 can be used as a proxy for the country’s corporate sector, something to which readers might appreciate.”

The latest Top 1000 Corporations in the Philippines, the 32nd volume, presented strong earnings as economic growth remains sustained. According to Mr. Uy, “the narrative for growth is still intact as the Top 1000 firms’ 11.7% gross revenue growth and 6.4% net income growth in 2017 compared to that of the overall economy’s 9.2% showing in 2017 based on current prices.”

“To recall, the Philippine economy expanded by 6.7% based on constant 2000 prices, above the low end of the government’s 6.5-7.5% target range for 2017,” he added.

Another trend observed in the recent Top 1000, according to the research head, is the positive association of economic growth with the corporate sector’s earnings growth.

“In fact, when we compare the historical gross domestic product (GDP) growth using current prices with gross revenues from the Top 1000 from 1987 to 2017, it shows a moderate positive correlation with a coefficient of 0.61 (a coefficient of one denotes perfect positive correlation),” Mr. Uy added.

The recent editions of Top 1000 have witnessed the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) ranking first for three consecutive years. The power distributor has taken the top spot since the 30th volume of the Top 1000 back in 2016.

Meanwhile, the magazine’s 2018 edition showed Meralco earning P275.42 billion in gross revenue in 2017, 9.9% higher from 2016’s earnings, while accumulating P271.9 billion in net sales, 10.5% higher from the previous earnings. Its net income, however, decreased by 1.6% to P20.24 billion.

Meralco’s controlling stakeholder, Beacon Electric Asset Holdings, Inc., is partly owned by PLDT, Inc. Hastings Holdings, Inc., a unit of PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., has a majority stake in BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which it controls.

Petron Corp. also remained in secnd place for the third time. It recently earned P274.31 billion in gross revenue, up by 18.8%; P271.12 billion in net sales, increasing by 20.1%; and P8.95 billion in net income, up by 57.1%.

The third to 10th placers are as follows: Toyota Motor Philippines Corp. with P175.15 billion in gross revenue; Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. with P171.69 billion; TI (Philippines), Inc. with P150.82 billion; Toshiba Information Equipment (Philippines), Inc. with P134.88 billion; Philippines Airlines, Inc. with P133.16 billion; Mercury Drug Corp. with P132.73 billion; BDO Unibank, Inc. with P127.42 billion; and Nestlé Philippines, Inc. with P125.98 billion.

Mr. Uy pointed to a confluence of several factors causing the outstanding performance of the top 10, such as companies riding on macroeconomic performance, their dominant market power relative to their respective industries, and the demand of their goods and services.

For this year’s edition, Mr. Uy said Top 1000 readers can expect the same level of effort and dedication that BusinessWorld has put into producing the magazine year after year. “Hopefully, readers will still find the information in the publication useful and enjoyable,” he said.

Getting ready for Industry 4.0

By Mark Louis F. Ferrolino, Special Features Writer

AS THE first business newspaper in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia, BusinessWorld has successfully positioned itself as the benchmark of quality economic journalism with high regard to integrity and excellence. It has been recognized as the most respected and most read business daily, delivering in-depth news stories, critical commentaries, interesting features, and special reports.

With today’s fast-changing times and landscape, BusinessWorld goes beyond traditional economic and business reporting. It began staging valuable events that serve as a great platform for industry and government leaders to converse on pertinent issues and challenges affecting the country. The now 32-year-old newspaper company has proven that it can also be a reliable partner of both the public and private sectors in shaping radical solutions and innovative ways that contribute to the growth of the Philippine economy.

Just recently, the country’s leading business daily once staged its award-winning BusinessWorld Economic Forum with the theme “The Future of Business: Next-wave Disruptions & Opportunities.” The whole-day forum brought together thought leaders, industry experts, business executives, government policymakers, innovators, academicians, technology providers and other leading figures in the society who shared their insights on the promises and risks of technology and how they could impact businesses over the next 10 years.

The recently held BusinessWorld Economic Forum gathered more than 700 high-level attendees from different sectors in the country. Just like in the previous years, the event served as a venue for the attendees to network with other top executives, build a good business relationship and discuss vital issues.

In addition to the annual BusinessWorld Economic Forum, BusinessWorld has also been organizing timely events in the past years that garnered positive remarks from the attendees. These include the BusinessWorld Stock Market Roundtable and the BusinessWorld Cybersecurity Forum. BusinessWorld, indeed, raised the bar in organizing local business events.

This Sept. 9, BusinessWorld is once again making history with the first-of-its-kind BusinessWorld Industry 4.0 Summit, which will be held at Shangri-La at The Fort, Bonifacio Global City in Taguig City.

The Industry 4.0 Summit will be presented by BusinessWorld, in partnership with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the Philippine Chamber of Telecommunications Operators (PCTO). With the theme “Winning Together in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” it will gather the best minds from the public and private sectors to discuss how the Philippines and businesses can prepare and collaborate well to thrive and win in the impending Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as Industry 4.0.

According to Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, the Industry 4.0 will be driven largely by the convergence of digital, biological and physical innovations, which will unfold over the 21st century. Just like the three industrial revolutions that preceded it, Industry 4.0 is envisioned to significantly change how we live, work and play with the fusion of advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), quantum computing, and other technologies.

The upcoming BusinessWorld Industry 4.0 Summit will focus on the said things, which will serve as an eye opener to where the businesses are heading, said BusinessWorld Executive Vice-President Lucien C. Dy Tioco.

“Industry 4.0 Summit will educate the audience what these technologies are and what impact they could do to your business. On the other side, it is showing the effect of these technologies in different industries: How it’s going to change the telco industry? How smart homes and smart cities will thrive and how they will change our lifestyle? There are several opportunities abound with these new technologies for the different industries,” Mr. Dy Tioco said.

For PCTO Chairman Enrico L. Delos Reyes, it is important for businesses to understand what Industry 4.0 is all about, together with the emerging technologies associated with it, for them to adjust and evolve in the future.

“If you’re in a business, you have to understand where the things are going and what are the things needed. So, you will have expectation and anticipation,” Mr. Delos Reyes said. “If you know the direction and the vision involved in this revolution, you can prepare yourself better and customize the evolution in your business.”

The BusinessWorld Industry 4.0 Summit will be a whole-day conference packed with various topics that will deal on aligning the country’s national ICT development agenda to IR 4.0; understanding the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its effects on economy, business and governments; preparing the country for the Fourth Industrial Revolution; and strong leadership and right legislations amid IR 4.0.

The summit will consist meaningful panel discussions, to be moderated by BusinessWorld editors. The first discussion on “The Valuable Player: Telco Industry’s Key Role in the IR 4.0 Game” will delve into how can telecommunication companies adapt to the changes the Industry 4.0 will bring. The second panel discussion — “Transformation Allies: How Government and the Public Sector can Maximize the Developments brought by IR 4.0” — will discuss how can emerging technologies transform the public sector. The third discussion, “The Era of Progress: Identifying Opportunities in Philippine Commerce during IR 4.0,” will tackle the opportunities await in the commerce of the future and how can the country harness them.

Meanwhile, the discussion on “Investing for the Future: How IR 4.0 will Shape the Banking and Finance Sector” will discuss the role of traditional banks in a world of digital currencies, decentralized and cashless transactions. The fifth discussion, “Connecting the Links: How the Real Estate, Transport and Manufacturing Industries Can Collaborate to Prepare for IR 4.0,” will tackle how can these industries further improve with the help of technology. The last discussion — “A Smart and Friendly Tomorrow: A Look at Smart Cities and Tourism in the IR 4.0” — will focus on how the way of life will change.

Mr. Dy Tioco hopes that the Industry 4.0 Summit will be instrumental to gain the attention of the government in crafting policies that will enable emerging technologies to come in. “It’s critical because it’s making our country competitive to other countries who have already started looking at these technologies,” Mr. Dy Tioco said.

Metro Pacific Hospital Group to hold first-ever Job Fair Caravan

MANILA, Philippines, 31 st July 2019 – Metro Pacific Hospital Holdings Inc. (MPHHI) will conduct its first-ever, one-day only Job Fair Caravan with nine of its partner hospitals at the SM Megamall Megatrade Hall 3 in Mandaluyong, 10:00AM-7:00PM to hire nurses, allied health care professionals, and other medical-related professionals right on site.

Being the largest private hospital chain in the Philippines with a collective portfolio of fourteen (14) top-notch hospitals, eight (8) clinics, and unparalleled service, Metro Pacific Hospital Holdings Inc. (MPHHI) thrusts to provide quality medical healthcare to Filipinos as well as create an engaged group of healthcare professionals aimed to deliver a genuine experience through a culture of caring, quality and excellence. As one of its main goals for this year, the hospital group aims to directly address both the unemployment and underemployment situation of several medical-related course graduates and medical practitioners in the country.

As it is known, the Philippine hospital industry is still in dire need of competent and dedicated individuals who are willing to serve and save the lives of people when they need it most. Even though an excessive number of graduates of medical-related
courses have flooded the employment pool, there is a definite scarcity of practicing health professionals, doctors, nurses, midwives, etc. in the Philippines.

In addition, several medical professionals continuously search for greener pastures by finding employment overseas instead of the Philippines. In recent years, the group has seen common concerns and issues on the continuous migration of nurses and healthcare professionals, as well as the more aggressive talent acquisition strategies and tactics of local hospitals and recruitment agencies. By the same token, the perceived lack of viable employment opportunities hinders these educated individuals from finding jobs that allow them to practice their professions in hospitals, leading them to fulfill careers in other fields.

To address this existing unemployment problem, MPHHI aims to not only showcase and ideally fill up the vacancies in their operations, but also exhibit the existing and expanding network of hospitals under its umbrella – an objective that highlights the group as a stable community of companies where these fresh graduates and professionals can build their career with competitive advantage.

Through this effort by the MPHHI Hospital Group, interested applicants are given the opportunity to directly apply to a pre-selected, industry-specific selection of jobs in strategically located hospitals and clinics throughout Metro Manila and the Philippines. The first-ever MPHHI Job Fair Caravan is providing a streamlined venue that allows them to see the various options they have for hospital employment within the country.

“We take pride in the fact that MPHHI is committed not only to transforming hospitals by investing in the best equipment, improving infrastructure and delivering world-class health service to Filipinos nationwide but also by making our hospitals, employers of choice by nurses and other medical practitioners.  A number of our hospitals have received several awards for being the best employers in the industry.” says MPIC Human Resources Head Loudette Anne M. Zoilo. “We aim to reach out to all medical
practitioners and provide them the chance to be part of our hospital group, delivering quality of service while taking advantage of the synergies of our group operation.”

The participating hospitals under MPHHI are as follows: Makati Medical Center, Central Luzon Doctors’ Hospital, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Asian Hospital and Medical Center, Cardinal Santos Medical Center, Marikina Valley Medical Center, Sacred Heart Hospital, St. Elizabeth Hospital, and Mega Clinic.

Interested applicants are expected to bring with them copies of their updated resumés, as well as any other supporting documents that they deem necessary for job application. It is also expected of them to be prepared for face-to-face interviews and possible examinations. Job offers will be given right on the spot.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Spotlight is BusinessWorld’s new sponsored section that allows advertisers to amplify their brand and connect with BusinessWorld’s audience by enabling them to publish their stories directly on the BusinessWorld Web site. For more information, send an email to www.bworldonline.com.

Drop the sedition charges

The filing of sedition charges against Vice-President Leni Robredo and 35 other individuals who are identified with the so-called “yellow opposition” is alarming.

One can dismiss it as political harassment. The accuser, after all, lacks credibility. The Philippine National Police itself says that the accuser named Peter Joemel Advincula, aka Bikoy, is a fraudster and a criminal. His affidavit, even upon cursory reading, is foolish and laughable.

What motivates this act of harassment? Is it another tactical ploy used by the Rodrigo Duterte administration to distract the public from sensitive issues like the weak-kneed foreign policy and the political infighting that mars the last half of the administration’s term? Is it the initiative of the Marcos camp to unseat the Vice-President in light of the inevitable quashing of Bongbong Marcos’s poll protest?

Or is it the brutality and hubris of those in power who want to crush criticism and dissent? The use of threat, coercion, and violence to sow fear among the people and to subdue all types of opposition is evident. Pursuing mercilessly the war on drugs, slaying and detaining radical Left activists, condoning — if not encouraging — extra-judicial killing and other human rights violations, and arbitrarily using legal instruments to subdue the political opposition are all part of Duterte’s authoritarian playbook.

The President, through his spokesman, disavows involvement in this latest move to suppress the opposition. But the political reality is that the Philippine National Police (PNP) Criminal Investigation and Detection Group would not dare file sedition charges involving no less than the Vice-President and other prominent personalities without a go-ahead signal from above.

In this political case and other similar conditions, the PNP and, for that matter, the Armed Forces take their cue from Malacañang. A recent statement from Duterte regarding his preference for appointing men with military background is quite revealing (“Duterte to announce changes in Cabinet,” Manila Bulletin, July 19, 2019): “I assume maybe again a military man kasi madali mag-utos, magtrabaho (they are easy to order, to work). And they do it without a question. Kaya sabi ko sa kanya (So I tell them), when I tell you do this and do that, do not question me because I will never give you an order to do something that is illegal.” Whether the President never gives an illegal order is debatable, but the point here is that he likes military people who without question will follow orders.

Despite the prevailing authoritarianism, our people still value democracy. Duterte is indeed lucky that the people are very satisfied with his administration’s performance, thus giving him a lot of political capital to do things.

Vice-President Leni Robredo during the celebration of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines’ 45th anniversary — OVP

The latest objective data on growth, income, inflation, and poverty also show that his administration is delivering the services that the people want most in providing jobs and higher wages, stabilizing prices, and reducing poverty.

Yet, as acknowledged by the administration’s economic managers, much still has to be done to put in place the necessary reforms. In fact, economic performance resulting in better lives for the people could have been better if not for controversies, including the political polarization, which are disturbing to investors.

But the political polarization is unnecessary to advance the Duterte administration’s economic and political agenda. Duterte, after all has gained overwhelming political dominance. In the same vein, having a social consensus and welcoming multi-partisan participation will accelerate the fulfillment of the desired development goals that the administration is committed to.

Cooperation, even among enemies, is preferred to never-ending combat and retaliation that would ultimately harm everyone. The ploy of filing sedition charges against the political opposition runs counter to this approach.

And there is an interest to protect even for those in the administration. Political polarization impairs their reform agenda. Political polarization undermines unity and prevents an inclusive approach that would enable society to achieve prosperity.

The reformers within government should note this and take action to reverse polarization. Drop the ludicrous and baseless charges against Vice-President Robredo et al.

 

Filomeno S. Sta. Ana III coordinates the Action for Economic Reforms.

www.aer.ph

EVs making full charge

Text and photos by Kap Maceda Aguila

IT’S CLEARLY boiling down to a question of when, not if.

The pace of mobility electrification in the Philippines is increasing, with the Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines (eVAP) leading the, well, charge. The annual Philippine Electric Vehicle Summit (PEVS), now on its seventh staging, again served as a signpost for and indicator of how far the country has gone and where it will go next in the journey to full electrification.

Themed “Electric Vehicles: Modernizing the Transportation Landscape, Driving Sustainable Growth,” the PEVS was staged last week at the SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City.

Images of man-made and induced catastrophes such as wars and global warming provided some shock value to a gathered audience even as it contrasted with a hopeful window into how tomorrow can be much, much different. “We’re going to make it a better world,” sang Krystal Brimner, who wound up the opening presentation.

Talk about disruption and shifts continue to underpin the gradual, more widespread adoption of emission-free electric vehicles (EVs). This change is being reflected even in the way companies are envisioning themselves — such as car makers calling themselves mobility brands, and gas firms transitioning into energy companies.

Of course, the onus of shrinking our carbon footprint is not just in the hands of automakers (or mobility brands), but our need to get from here to there is an undeniable contributor to greenhouse gases choking us to the tune of seven million deaths a year from upper respiratory illness. It then behooves the people who are churning out automobiles to have them be more environment-friendly. These days, going greener invariably means EVs.

“We are highly encouraged by the support we are getting from major automotive manufacturers which is a very strong indication that our transportation sector is slowly but steadily transitioning to more modern, energy-efficient, greener and sustainable mobility so that we can create cleaner and better cities for our children,” said eVAP President Edmund A. Araga in a release. “Accelerating our country’s transition to fossil-free driving would require, more than ever, the help of our academic institutions in terms of research, innovation, industry linkage, trainings, among others. That’s why this year, we are launching the eVAP Academe Chapter to help close the knowledge gap that is holding back our countrymen from choosing electric vehicles and to help our local EV industry address the barriers to widespread EV adoption.”

Delivering a speech at the PEVS, Mr. Araga exhorted all to continue to provide an “enabling environment for the commercialization of EVs in the Philippines.” Intrinsic to a more conducive industry is for players to have more “clarified roles.” The eVAP head also revealed that the association welcomed four new corporate members into the fold, namely, Kymco Philippines, Lagao Drivers Operators Transport Cooperative, Development of Electric Conveyors Corporation, and Autoitalia Philippines Enterprises, Inc.

In anticipation of heightened battery demand, eVAP also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Philippine Nickel Industry Association so that the two entities may have a closer linkage resulting in research programs, an industry road map, and corporate social responsibility efforts — not to mention a local battery supply chain.

Mr. Araga also cited Senate Bill 2137, filed late last year by Senator Sherwin Gatchalian. The act seeks to provide for “the national energy policy and regulatory framework for the use of electric and hybrid vehicles, and the establishment of electric charging stations.”

On the bill’s introduction, Senator Gatchalian writes, “Notwithstanding the contribution of electric vehicles to energy security, sustainability, and savings, barriers still remain for the development of the industry, specifically the high upfront costs of owning an electric vehicle, and the limited charging infrastructure. Thus, it is crucial that a policy and regulatory framework is in place to usher in the uptake of electric vehicles in the country.”

The bill seeks to “instruct” the Department of Energy (DoE) to create an EV road map and distribution utilities to incorporate a charging infrastructure development plan into their power development, require private and public buildings and establishments to EV-dedicated parking slots with charging stations, mandate open access to integrate charging equipment in gas stations, expand non-fiscal incentives “such as exemption from number coding and prioritization in registration,” and give “time-bound fiscal incentives” for EV manufacturers and importers.

eVAP is also doing its part to encourage allies in the EV campaign by relaunching the E-Mobility Award to “recognize organizations and individuals for their outstanding contribution to the realization of eVAP’s vision and mission through successful EV deployments, advocacy efforts, or through innovations that aim to simplify and increase the electrification process.”

Meanwhile, eSakay, Inc. President Raymond Ravelo declared that there has never been a “more energizing time” for EVs and charging infrastructure as new business models roll out. eSakay is a wholly owned company of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) that purveys electric vehicle solutions. He cited that improvement in battery technology, among others, has contributed to the global rise of EVs from 500,000 in 2015 to a projected 560 million in 20 years. “One of three vehicles in 2040 will be an electric vehicle,” he said.

He insisted, in a speech, that a sign of this “exciting transition in the country” is the increasing number of e-jeepneys plying the streets, along with the deployment of e-trikes by LGUs. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see electric buses and taxis (next),” added Mr. Ravelo. Even the recent proliferation of “electric micro-mobility” solutions such as e-scooters and e-motorcycles augers well for the future of EVs — so long as there are “enabling policies and regulatory frameworks.”

Department of Energy Assistant Secretary, speaking on behalf of the department head Alfonso Cusi, acknowledged that “policies play a critical role” in greater EV adoption. There must be “incentives, standards, (and) support for charging infrastructure,” while bridging the “cost gap” between EVs and conventional vehicles. “For an EV movement to be successful… (we need) to establish partnerships, (have) political will and incentives to build capacity.”

EVs have become more meaningful in light of the Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP) of government, said Department of Transportation (DoTr) Undersecretary Mark Richmund de Leon. He described it as the “biggest transformational initiative of the administration,” as the government seeks to showcase modern vehicles nationwide, including EVs, in order to push for the replacement of aging public transport.

USec. De Leon rued “the sad truth” that 90% of public transport are more than 30 years old, and that jeepneys in particular “are not designed for public transportation,” but are merely a “stop gap.” He also lamented that “we have yet to adopt clean air standards” despite the passing of Republic Act No. 8749 or the Philippine Clean Air Act way back in 1999, which states in its Declaration of Principles: “The State shall protect and advance the right of the people to a balanced and healthful ecology in accord with the rhythm and harmony of nature,” while recognizing that “polluters must pay.”

“Let’s clean up public transportation,” said the DoTr official. “We’re providing comfort to our riding public; the dignity that they deserve.”

ILLUSTRATION BY TONE DAÑAS
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