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Leaving work to live a life

By Robert A. Vergara, Jr., Digital Reporter
FOUNDERS WHO were formerly employees have that one moment where they realized they had to give up their corporate careers. For Ginger Arboleda, the 33-year-old chief operating officer and cofounder of Taxumo, that moment came in 2012 when she was due to a promotion that would catapult her into an executive position at a banking giant she had been working at for more than six years.
“I was happy but I wanted to do so much more,” she said in a forum organized by SparkUp in April. “I wanted to see the direct impact that I could have to people.”
That same year, she became pregnant again, following a miscarriage in 2010.
Arboleda recalled, “I couldn’t see myself as one of the executives of the bank. When I found out that I was pregnant again, I realized that [maybe it’s time] to focus on living my life again.”
So in January 2013, a few months after she left the corporate world, Arboleda began organizing Manila Workshops — a series of 101 sessions for aspiring entrepreneurs and freelancers. “After a few work shops, I realized that it was what I want to do,” she said. “I want to see that our attendees indeed follow their dreams.”
And in that process, Arboleda stumbled upon another idea. “Things started when I was doing my taxes,” she recounted. “I found it frustrating. It was so tedious. I had to line up at the BIR and renew a lot of business papers, and numbers aren’t my forte.”
In 2015, Arboleda with her husband EJ, who has a 15-year background in IT, came up with the idea of creating a platform that would automate the rigorous process of filling taxes for local entrepreneurs and freelancers: an app which they christened Taxumo.
The two began presenting the idea in pitching competitions and later on became part of Echelon Asia Summit’s top 100 start-ups and IdeaSpace’s incubation program, both giving the company seed funding and mentorship opportunities, among other benefits. Last year, the company also received the four-year tax holiday grant from DTI’s Board of Investments.
Taxumo is now valued at $1.5 million, following a funding round.
But for Arboleda, valuations are just “all about $1 billion,” harking to the number required to call a start-up a unicorn. More important to her, she says, is “helping 100 million Filipinos. For us, that matters more than the valuation.”

How a government employee began to weave dreams

By Robert A. Vergara, Jr., Digital Reporter
AKABA’S 24–year–old Chief Operating Officer Daniel Lumain was immersed in implementing policies for government-run companies before the country changed leadership in 2016 and put an end to his two-year career.
But that backdrop gave him “not just the connections,” but also the fuel to continue being of service to his countrymen. He then returned to his undergraduate thesis at the Ateneo de Manila University and grew it into what Akaba is today: a social enterprise selling bags and accessories made of handwoven textiles by over 100 weavers from Ilocos Norte, Isabela, Abra, Oriental Mindoro, Zamboanga, Sulu, Basilan, Iloilo and South Cotabato.
“It’s our mission to help these weavers promote their artistry and craftsmanship, but at the same time create a sustainable business that is relevant to the supply chain,” he said. “When we went to Ilocos Norte, we found out that a lot of weavers create handwoven textiles for around a month or so, but only sell them for around P20 per yard, and when we went to the market we actually saw middle men selling them for P150 to P200.”
Unlike many handwoven crafts, however, Akaba didn’t target the so-called “tita market.” “We chose a younger market and lowered our price points. What we always say is if you buy a high-end product worth P10,000, sure you’ve helped a community, but when is the next time you’ll help them? We can sell a product for around P1,500, sell a hundred pieces, and basically continuously support the communities.”
Akaba currently sells its wares across major malls, but because it aims to become an established “Southeast Asian brand,” it is also expecting to enter e-commerce platform Amazon to tap the American market this year, on top of its plan to expand its ties with Cambio Market to further introduce the brand in Canada. Lumain added that the team is also considering to widen its Asian market by selling its products in Hong Kong and Japan.
“I always believe that poverty is not just an economic situation, it’s a mind-set problem,” he said. “These people changing their views, believing that there’s a chance for them to have a better life, that in itself is the biggest achievement that we’ve had.”

Going beyond taste

By Robert A. Vergara, Jr., Digital Reporter
I DON’T WANT to start a food business that solely sells food,” said Francis Reyes, the 25-year-old CEO of Caravan Food Group, Inc., parent company of rolled ice cream store Elait and donut shop OverDoughs. “I want to send a message through food,” he added. “I want to hire people who the usual food entrepreneurs wouldn’t hire.”
Graduates from College of Saint Benilde’s School for the Deaf currently staff Elait’s branches in three malls. The company is also in the process of employing more people with autism or down syndrome for OverDough’s current stalls.
This ambitious idea, Reyes admitted, was risky for a service-oriented business, especially in this age of social media when one’s dissatisfaction can easily taint a brand’s reputation.
“I didn’t know how the public would react so, at first, we paired up deaf employees with those who can hear, then eventually we saw that they can handle things by themselves,” he recalled. “That’s when we decided that everyone would be deaf in the whole team.”
Reyes, who holds a degree in hotel, restaurant and institution management from the University of the Philippines, hails from the family behind clinic chain SkinStation. And while that kind of background might attest to his business potential, it also posed a challenge: some mall operators would press him about building his own brand when he could capitalize on their already established family business. After all, the playing field for dessert concepts was already dominated by big, mostly foreign, players like, say, Dunkin’ Donuts or Dairy Queen.
“When I was trying to pitch our concept to mall owners, I really had to push the idea that what we’re different, that what we’re doing is something else,” he said.
The persistence, however, did pay off. The company has earned enough profits to sustain operations and even fund expansion plans.
Yet more than the money, Reyes considers the fulfillment of his deaf employees as his biggest achievement in business to date.
“When I was interviewing them at the start, their goal was just to survive and support their families,” he said. “Now, they really appreciate the business more. They really take care of it, and they treat the branch as their home. They have a place to belong to.”

Coming up roses

By Pola Esguerra del Monte, Multimedia Editor
AT THE height of the AlDub love team phenomenon, Diane Yap and Lauren Gavino, who had been running an online flower shop for only a month then, received an order for 49 stems of red Ecuadorian roses to be delivered at the Philippine Arena in Bulacan, where some concert with ticket sales reaching P14 million would be filled with 55,000 people.
Their response: “If you want, on top of the cost of the arrangement, pay for our gas and toll.”
On that day, Oct. 24, 2015, that three-hour commercial-free episode registered a TV rating of 50.8%, the channel stated citing data from AGB Nielsen, compared to the 5.4% registered by the competitor. Tweets for the hashtag reached 39.5 million. And amid that number of viewers, actor Alden Richards was walking up the stage carrying that 49-rose boxed arrangement himself— the brand name “Petalier” in clear, full view.
Gavino found herself crying in front of the TV.
“Ang kapal ng mukha namin ’di ba?,” the two now laugh, looking back at what they consider their store’s big break. “Sobrang fail namin. We didn’t know who AlDub was.”
But entrepreneurship isn’t a bed of roses, and getting flowers on screen took more than just luck or serendipity. At 11 p.m. the previous night — only a few hours before the concert — their supplier for the flowers backed out. Yet instead of giving up right then and there, they insisted on delivering.
Yap had a backup plan ready. The day before, she had begun contacting all the flower suppliers she could find on Google—pleading “Please po, magbabayad kami.”—all while going around public markets to do surveys for a senator she was then still working full-time for. After finding one, a certain “Dra. Anna” who remains their main supplier to this day, they finally got the flowers by 2 a.m., arranged all 49 stems, then had their personal driver to deliver it to Bulacan. The rest, as they say, is history.
“That’s the first time people saw pretty roses in a box,” Yap said.
Influencer marketing has since been Petalier’s main avenue to drive sales.
A “calculated gamble,” Yap describes. “Sometimes they’re effective, sometimes they won’t post you. So that’s money out the door.”
Still, it works, and the two have also launched a new baby: a luxury balloonery called Blloons.
“We thrive on Instagram. We’re typical millennial business people. Uber doesn’t own a single car. We thrive online,” she said. “You can go far with just online. We’re the perfect example.”
Petalier is an online business. Orders can be placed on petalier.com but queries can be sent to 0977- 841-7738 or mail@petalier.com.

The taste of childhood

By Joseph L. Garcia, Reporter
YOUNG CHEF Miko Aspiras channeled memories of childhood playgrounds in the Philippines to create a special dessert for his presentation during Madrid Fusion Manila 2016.
For many Filipinos, playtime would consist of playing in the hot sun on a swing set. Aspiras gathers these elements together, creating a story from sensory memory: the taste of sweat, rust, and santan flowers. “It’s a memory of when I was a child, through flavors that I didn’t really intend to taste, but I’ve tasted… it’s part curiosity in my head.”
Parks and gardens around the country have santan bushes growing in them, filled with bunches of its tiny flowers. Many people’s childhood memories include plucking out a tiny flower and sucking out the sweet tiny drop of nectar from within its long hollow stem. Aspiras gathered a humungous bunch of these flowers and extracted the nectar to use in his dessert.
As for sweat and rust, the chef relied on the help of an “extraction system,” a machine which enables one to get the approximation of a flavor of something. Aspiras placed in a sample of his own sweat, and a sample of rust in the machine. “It’s… something that I can remember all the time,” he said, talking about the sensory memory of childhood sweat, which he says tastes like alkaline and salt. With this in mind, he added this to salted caramel, which he then distilled, leading to a clearer consistency. “It’s perfect for my dish, because it looks like sweat,” he said.
Aspiras is currently involved in restaurants under the Tasteless Food Group, which includes the French-Japanese bistro Le Petit Souffle.
He started out learning about bread and pastries under chef Sau del Rosario in 2007, going on to refine his skills while working in the pastry sections of top hotels including Fairmont, Raffles, Edsa Shangri-La, and Resorts World Manila where he worked with Cyrilly Soenen.
The young chef has received a slew of awards in his short career, including awards and citations from the Philippine Culinary Cup, World Association of Chefs Societies Congress, and the Hong Kong Culinary Classics.
According to the souvenir book for Madrid Fusion 2016, Mr. Aspiras has used, or has tried to use, ingredients such as pig’s blood and rotten milk to achieve his sensory goals.
At a press conference after his presentation, he was asked whether he knew that the odd ingredients and the odd techniques he likes to use would become hits, especially in the Philippines, where slices of cake can be more than enough to satisfy most people’s sweet tooth.
“I didn’t know. I really didn’t know. It’s just that I’m pursuing my dreams… I’m really happy that a lot of people are appreciating it.”
First published in BusinessWorld on April 14, 2016.

A word of advice for start-up founders

WHEN 28-year-old Katrina Chan returned to the Philippines in 2012 after finishing her studies in the US, the local tech start-up community was just in the “awareness and capacity building” stage, a stark contrast to where she came from.
“Everyone in the US was working or was aspiring to work in Silicon Valley,” she recounted. “When I came to the Philippines, I wondered where the tech scene was, who the start-up guys were, and I quickly found out that there was almost no scene.”
Ms. Chan, who graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in materials science and engineering, with additional major in business administration, said she even struggled to find events organized for start-ups.
But a lot has changed since then. Fast forward to 2014, the country has witnessed the unprecedented rise in the number of new and innovative b u s i n e s s e s , mostly led by ambitious young entrepreneurs. The current count, according to a study by PwC Isla Lipana and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), is at around 300.
Along with this is the growing interest of the private sector to support or invest in these startups, paving the way for the establishment of organizations that support through mentorship and seed funding, among others.
Ms. Chan, for instance, began volunteering before heading the growth division of business incubator IdeaSpace, where she mentored early-stage start-ups. From there, she founded and now directs QBO Philippines, a partnership between government agencies such as the DTI and Department of Science and Technology and JPMorgan Philippines. Launched in 2016, QBO aims to support and grow the country’s startup ecosystem by providing forums, seminars, and even business incubation to local start-ups.
“We’re seeing a lot of growth across Southeast Asia,” she said. “More people being bullish that start-ups can actually compete in the global stage.”
But while Filipino startup founders already have ideas bright enough to conquer the global market, Ms. Chan observed they lack one more thing — angst.
“What I see missing a lot here is ambition and confidence in their idea,” she said. Relative to foreign founders whose startups command the level of funding, development and traction, Filipino founders, she observed, are “shy.” Instead, she says, founders should have “the grit to go through the initial pains.”
“What matters is who does it faster, who executes it better, and a lot of that is driven by the team or the founders,” she added.
“It’s not about the solution, it’s about the problem you’re solving,” she concluded. “If the problem exists, then your product will make sense.” — Robert A. Vergara, Jr.

The skateboard: a vehicle for chicken

By Pola Esguerra del Monte, Multimedia Editor
FROM MERE slacker uniform, skateboard attire has seeped into the runways of the world’s fashion capitals.
For trans-disciplinary designer Sean Bautista, the skateboard culture is more than just a fashion thing: it is also a vehicle to purvey chicken.
The Comme des Garçons-wearing Ateneo graduate who looks up to David Chang took workshops in design management at Parsons School of Design in New York City before building two original concepts: Tetsuo, an East-Asian casual dining restaurant, and Transit, a retail design concept.
“I’m a fine arts student,” he insists when asked if he ever considered taking a business course. Tetsuo, after all, began as a chicken stall at Ateneo competing for space in the cafeteria. In a week, they met their ROI. After that, they began selling merchandise (imagine, a chicken stall with its own merch), before branching out to events.
“Organically” is how he describes the ideation process. “I and a few friends came together,” he recounted. “I mean we just hung out, we were into skateboarding, music, hiphop… but then we also liked cooking.”
“So from that idea and just trying to be authentic to ourselves, we’ve created a brand that suits or embodies what we thought. Like, embodies our relationship as friends. It starts with the chicken concept because, yeah, we wanted to create something that was palatable to our audience and that everyone would enjoy, but then we tried to elevate the concept and create a bigger personality around it by injecting things that were authentic to us,” he said. “To simplify that idea, we just came from a unique standpoint of dudes just hanging out, cooking together, and being interested in different facets of subculture, and then translating that into a product.”
From its formerly five-square-meter space inside Ateneo, it has expanded into a 50-square-meter restaurant along Katipunan, housing 31 seats. And it is, in fact, things like the playlist, typography, and visuals, among others, that formulate the overall brand.
“I’m able to connect to other people in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I was just thinking about the business,” he says. “If I was only thinking about business goals, I don’t think Tetsuo as a product would translate in the way it does.”

The rising tech start-up scene in the Philippines

By Robert A. Vergara, Jr., Digital Reporter
IN 2016, 22-year-old Charles Lim established his own company Veer Immersive Technologies, Inc. (Veer), dismissing a possible corporate career in line with his background in computer science.
Lim, who hails from a family of Filipino-Chinese businessmen, established Veer that develops software content focused on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), banking on the growing trends of emerging technologies.
To date, his company’s clients include Philippine Airlines, to which it provides VR-enabled training for its cabin crew.
“Right now we want to focus on the airline industry, to create a really good system that would revolutionize cabin crew training for any kind of airline, be it in the Philippines, Singapore, US or Europe,” he said.
Veer is just among the booming technology-powered start-ups in the Philippines. Since 2012, the country has witnessed an unprecedented rise in the number of new and innovative businesses mostly led by ambitious young entrepreneurs like Mr. Lim.
According to the first study profiling the Philippine start-up ecosystem by PwC Philippines and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), there are currently more than 300 start-ups in the country and over 200 of them are actively operating.

INCUBATORS
With this came the interest of the private sector to support startups by investing in them through business incubation, providing selected enterprises with mentorship, funding, and office spaces, to name a few grants.
For example, IdeaSpace Foundation, Inc. — established in 2012 with the help of companies, including Smart Communications, Inc., PLDT, First Pacific, and Meralco, among others — has received a total of 4,386 entries for its annual start-up incubation program since it opened. A total of 50 start-ups have undergone the program.
Kickstart, a venture capital firm under telecommunication giants Globe Telecom and backed by Ayala Corporation and SingTel, has been investing in tech start-ups in different funding series. Today, its portfolio of investees is comprised of 24 companies, including Wattpad, Zalora, coins.ph, and Kalibrr.
Lim and his company benefited from such initiatives. Veer had undergone the incubation programs of organizations like LaunchGarage and BrainSparks.
“Incubators are a huge help for businesses that are starting out because of the support and community that they provide. The years’ worth of experience and network that mentors can provide prove to be invaluable to businesses in their infancy as they learn to get their feet off the ground,” he said.
GOVERNMENT ROLE
The public sector, on its part, has also launched several initiatives to support these businesses.
In 2016, DTI and the Department of Science and Technology partnered with IdeaSpace and J.P. Morgan Foundation to establish QBO Innovation Hub, which aims to develop the local start-up scene.
Located at the DTI International Building in Makati, QBO has served as a mecca for start-up founders and budding entrepreneurs seeking network and education through weekly forums and free business 101 classes.
In 2017, the Department of Information and Communications Technology, in partnership with the private sector, launched the first Philippine Roadmap for Digital Startups, laying out strategic plans to develop the country’s start-up community.
In October of the same year, DTI held ASEAN Slingshot, a convention that gathered more than 80 tech start-ups from across Southeast Asia, including Mr. Lim’s Veer. During the event, at least 20 foreign angel investors were also invited and introduced to participating start-ups.
Just this May, a bill dubbed as the “Innovative Startup Act” had been passed on final reading in the Senate. Once enacted, the policy will direct the appropriation of a P1-billion venture fund, on top of other support like tax exemption, expedite processing of business permits, and free access to government services.
Katrina Chan, director of QBO, believes that the government plays a crucial role in developing the local start-up ecosystem.
“There’s so many things that the government can do, but at the end of the day it’s not the government’s job to create start-ups. The government’s role is to create that enabling environment where start-ups can thrive,” she said.
“The more that the government creates this kind of environment, it’s easy to start up, it’s easy to invest, and a lot of it will happen so start-ups can compete with the big guys.”
FUNDING
The current developments in the local start-up ecosystem have yet to transcend outside the Philippines. While Southeast Asia has pulled in more money from investors since 2012, only a small chunk of it went to the Philippines.
According to data from CB Insights, the country is far from its neighbours when it comes to outsourced funds. From January to September 2017, for example, the country has pocketed just $18 million, far from Singapore’s $3 billion, Indonesia’s $2.9 billion, and Malaysia’s $352 million.
However, the data showed that the Philippines had a significant deal activity despite the low funding, closing a total of 100 deals over the years.
For Mr. Lim, the development of the country’s startup ecosystem lies no longer just in business attributes, but in culture.
“I think we need to address the crab mentality and the mind-set that people are always out to get you. It’s too common that I see a person refusing to disclose their business idea fearing it might get stolen,” he said.
“We need to better develop a culture of collaboration and support for one another. We’ve taken steps in that direction, but some of the overarching issues are pretty deeply rooted in Filipino culture.”

America’s start-up scene is looking anemic

By Noah Smith
WHY AREN’T PEOPLE starting more start-ups? That might seem like a weird question to ask, in an age when Silicon Valley ventures are hot commodities and money and talent is flooding into machine learning companies. But in fact, Americans don’t start businesses like they used to.
Some of this decline has come from the decline of small businesses. When national chains like Walmart Inc. and Target Corp. can come to town and muscle out the competition, there’s not much point in opening a mom-and-pop shop. Online retailers like Amazon.com Inc. just compound the effect. Research indicates that this has been responsible for much of the overall decline in entrepreneurship.
That’s worrisome, because small business was traditionally one of the main gateways to the middle class. Without the option of starting a corner store, Americans without high skills or advanced degrees will find it that much harder to maintain comfortable lifestyles. Instead, many will have to seek jobs from large corporations, depriving them of personal autonomy and possibly driving down wages due to the increased competition for jobs.
This is an old and well-known problem. The decline in business formation in the retail and service sectors has been happening since the 1980s, even though the US government has enacted a steady stream of policies to counteract the trend. More initiatives to put the government’s thumb on the scale in favor of small businesses would probably be a good thing, but the decline in new retail businesses isn’t an acute crisis.
More worrying, however, is the decline in high-tech business formation. Tech businesses, unlike corner stores, tend to be high-growth businesses that employ lots of people. That same demand for labor also probably helps to drive up wages. And perhaps most important for the long term, technology startups are important for productivity growth.
Innovation is at the core of what tech startups do. They don’t necessarily do original science, but they take scientific findings and new technologies and combine them with creative new business models. That results in either better or cheaper versions of existing goods — for example, improved lithium-ion batteries — or entirely new goods that people didn’t even realize they would want, like coding tool GitHub (which was recently acquired by Microsoft Corp. for $7.5 billion). Newer, better and cheaper products raise the overall standard of living in the economy.
So it’s disturbing to see that high-technology start-ups have also been getting rarer. Here is a graph from a recent paper by economists Ryan Decker, John Haltiwanger, Ron Jarmin and Javier Miranda, who study economic dynamism and business formation, showing the percent of young businesses in various sectors:
The data only goes through 2013, so it’s possible that the last few years have seen a reversal of the trend. The Great Recession — from which the recovery only really began in earnest in 2013 — probably pushed these lines downward. But there are reasons to think there hasn’t been much of a start-up recovery. Chris Canipe of the website Axios notes that startup formation has barely ticked up in the last few years. While it’s possible that high-tech companies are bucking the overall trend, it seems unlikely.
So why are so few high-technology companies being formed in the US? There are a number of possible explanations. The boom in high-tech activity in the 1990s might have been a one-time bubble, or a temporary burst of activity in response to the invention and expansion of the internet. Davis et al. also mention the possibility that the US’s aging population might result in fewer founders and high-tech workers. An extremely pessimistic possibility is that there might simply be fewer new technologies and ideas to exploit.
But it’s also possible that the high-tech sector is becoming dominated by a few big players, leaving less room for innovators to break in. Tech titans like Amazon, Facebook Inc., Apple Inc., Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft have grown to staggering size.
These companies may be such powerhouses that entrepreneurs don’t find it worth their while to enter the market, because they’ll just get out-competed.
If Alphabet et al. are actually doing their own innovation, like Bell Labs or Xerox PARC in past decades, then this isn’t that big of a problem. But if it’s merely the threat of big-company competition keeping tech entrepreneurs out of the market, the picture looks worse.
Suppose I have a great idea for a new kind of algorithm to match customers with products. I could start my own online retailer built around that algorithm, but Amazon could just copy it (rather than acquiring my company), so I don’t. Yet in this hypothetical example, since I don’t actually start my start-up, Amazon actually doesn’t invent the new recommendation algorithm, and the innovation never gets done!
In other words, big tech companies might be acting like Walmart and Target, but muscling out tech startups rather than mom-and-pop stores. But unlike the retail sector, competition in the innovation space might sometimes leave new ideas unexploited.
The source of the decline in startup dynamism isn’t yet known. More research, and better understanding of the last few years, is needed before any definitive conclusions are reached. But if the tech sector is getting too concentrated, regulators might take a second look at options to reduce the dominance of the big players. — Bloomberg
This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

How flexible and co-working spaces are boosting productivity

By Arra B. Francia, Reporter
WHEN HEAD-HUNTING and executive search firm Manila Recruitment first rented out office spaces by ASPACE in Makati City in 2013, it started out with a “plug and play” concept— incorporating designs and work stations based on their immediate needs.
Five years hence, Manila Recruitment now views the co-working office brand as a contributor to its success over the years.
“Every client that comes in says, ‘this office is really cool,’ which helps us actually make a good impression. We’ve been here for five years now, and ASPACE has been very flexible in accommodating our needs,” Manila Recruitment Co-Founder Ida Montemayor told BusinessWorld in an interview.
Manila Recruitment is just one of several businesses who use offices operated by ASPACE, a homegrown co-working brand that runs collaborative workspaces in Makati, Bonifacio Global City, and Cebu.
ASPACE, like the vast market for co-working spaces in the country nowadays, seeks to cater to the revolving need for office spaces in a work force that is increasingly being dominated by millennials.
“I wanted to support the innovation community…We built the entire concept around that. We made sure that instead of putting people in boxes, we encourage interactions. We’re actually accessing life, and they leave work feeling like it was time well spent, and that helps the company thrive,” ASPACE Founder Matthew Morrison said in an interview.
International flexible workspace operator Regus also shares this view, noting that while traditional offices are still a legitimate and viable solution, they do not “work for the employee’s satisfaction,” nor do they recognize their needs.
“That is why even for the conventional office space, they need flexible workspace solutions to complement their needs,” Regus Philippines Country Manager Lars Wittig said in a separate interview.
Mr. Wittig noted that based on studies, workstations are actually vacant for 55% of the time, on average. With this, it would be much more efficient to switch to flexible workspaces.
“It’s driven by technology, the way that we work. People want to work flexibly…the primary reason for resigning is ‘because my employer was not flexible enough.’ So there’s that speed of change and financial implications. It hammers your key performance indicators,” Mr. Wittig said.
While providing workspaces for its member-companies, flexible workspaces also help companies reduce office rental costs—which is vital especially for firms that are just starting out.
Graphic and digital design studio startup DEZYNSPACE, for instance, said it saves around 40% for office rentals, since they only need office spaces at around three times a week. Co-working spaces such as ASPACE allows them this kind of flexibility.
“As a small design agency, we don’t need to have a team together everyday…The flexibility and cost effect of what we can do with lower office rental costs is there,” the company said.
In addition, DEZYNSPACE noted that using co-working spaces has actually made it easier to retain talent, since it gives them a fun working environment.
“As a medium-sized company, we need to invest in people…you can’t save on talent, you can’t discount that, so you have to learn to manage other costs,” DEZYNSPACE said.
ASPACE’s Mr. Morrison also said that given the traffic situation in Metro Manila, it is becoming less convenient for companies to hold programs or events outside their offices.
“If you work in a place where the events are, it takes the problems away. It’s a huge benefit,” Mr. Morrison said, adding that staging events inside the office allows their members to get a break.
A study by real estate consultancy firm Colliers International tagged flexible and co-working office spaces as no longer just a disruptor in the office market, but a fundamental part of the commercial real estate market.
In 2017, Colliers found that flexible workspace take-up by operators reached 204,600 square feet across 80 locations located primarily in central business districts. The property consultancy projects 200,000 sq. ft. more to be taken up this year.
The expansion of flexible workspaces followed the take-up from traditional companies, business process outsourcing firms, and offshore gaming firms.
“Given the range of end-users in flexible workspace we expect a wide geographical spread, and operators will likely set up several smaller sites rather than fewer large scale sites due to the poor transport infrastructure. For this reason, we may see space within retail malls repositioned as flexible workspace,” according to the report prepared by Colliers Associate Director Maricris Sarino.

Why basic education is a legacy-making issue

By Michael Henry Ll. Yusingco
FROM ABOUT THE EARLY 1970s to the mid-1980s, both the Philippines and South Korea were under brutal authoritarian regimes. Filipinos ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos via people power in February 1986, which coincidentally was the watershed event that inspired South Koreans to remove their own despotic leader.
It is worthy to point out however that when South Korea transitioned to democratic rule in 1987, they were already fully prepared to host the Summer Olympic Games in 1988. Whereas when Marcos and his cronies were deposed, the Philippines was left bankrupt and deep in debt. Indeed, Filipinos are still suffering from the devastation Marcos wreaked on the country during his dictatorship.
The disparity in economic development between the two countries since embarking on their respective constitutional democratic path is stark. For instance, for the past decade South Korea has been fully entrenched in the Very High Human Development category of the United Nation’s Human Development Index while the Philippines has been stuck at the Medium Human Development tier.
The blueprint for South Korea’s successful nation-building model is no secret. In his book Diamond Dilemma, author Tariq Hussain wrote:
“Asked to explain the reasons for Korea’s rapid economic ascent, economists will provide different interpretations. Broadly speaking, the two mains schools are the neoclassical view, which focuses on competitive export industries, and the revisionist view, which points to the role of the government in picking and pushing national champions. Both claims are valid in a sense but both fail to sufficiently recognize the real creators of modern Korea. Ultimately, it was the Koreans themselves who were responsible for making the world take notice of their country.”
Moreover, in their book, South Korea Since 1980, authors Uk Heo and Terrence Roehrig explained:
“Because of South Korea’s heavy investment in education and miraculous economic development, the World Bank describes South Korea as follows: “Korea’s successful knowledge-based development experience offers many valuable lessons for developing economies. The country has invested heavily in education and training, boosting innovation through intensive research and development, and developing modern and accessible infrastructure.””
Clearly, to view the population as the main driver of economic development entails giving education, both formal and technical-vocational, unprecedented premium. South Korea has done this even under their dictatorial leaders.
Filipino politicians on the other hand, have always treated the people as a collection of ignorant and impoverished citizens begging to be “saved.” Hence, public education has always been tied to patronage politics.
If genuine change is to happen in President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s term of office, his administration must treat Filipinos as a critical economic resource. Not simply the passive recipient of progress, but its main driver. And in doing so, the trajectory of the country’s population growth requires putting significant attention on basic education.
The population of the Philippines by 2020 will be 110 million. More critically, the school age population (0-19 years old) of the country will be around 44 million.
By 2045, the same demographic will be around 41 million. This means that Filipinos who are currently in elementary and high school will be responsible for roughly the same number of citizens 25 years or so down the line.
Consequently, the attention given by government to the education system particularly on the K to 12 framework must change. Basic education must be given more importance in the national human development plan.
In this regard, this caveat from respected BusinessWorld columnist, Filomeno S. Sta. Ana must be reiterated here:
“In this case, it is more equitable to use the bulk of the new money for services that will mainly benefit the poor — say K to 12 programs or public health programs. The argument to give resource priority to basic education gains more weight since it is the bedrock of higher education. Poor basic education results in ill-prepared students for tertiary education, Sadly, it is the poor who have a hard time meeting the standards for higher education, precisely because the preparatory work they get is inferior.”
Pertinently, one of the key findings of Working Paper 17-005 of the Ateneo School of Government entitled, K-12: Sustaining Education Under the Duterte Presidency, is very relevant:
“Political will, especially at the grassroots level, is necessary to sustain the gains as well as overcome implementation challenges of K to 12.”
South Korean leaders have always shown political will specially when it comes to the economic development of their country. Of course, their ways have not always been benign and trouble-free but the impact of their focus and determination on the economic performance of South Korea through the years is undeniable.
Mr. Duterte has consistently been promoted by his supporters as a leader who possesses the political will to do what is necessary for the good of his people. While at times his methods have been seen by some as controversial, his doggedness on doing right by the Filipino people can also be an asset.
Obviously, the president faces a very tough challenge when it come to the country’s basic education system. But promises of more classrooms and textbooks will definitely be not be enough. Neither are simplistic statements such as, “The quality of education is directly related to spending for education.” And public school being free does not automatically translate to Filipino youths being inside classrooms and learning.
The Duterte administration can project the status quo to 2045 by doing absolutely nothing and just blindly hope that Filipinos can overcome the surrounding difficulties that they will surely face. Or his government can institute radical reforms to ensure a truly high quality basic education for the Philippines in 2045 and beyond.
Jose Rizal in Manifesto to Certain Filipinos wrote: “Fellow countrymen: I have given many proofs that I desire as much as the next man liberties for our country: I continue to desire them. But I laid down as prerequisite the education of the people in order that by means of such instruction and work, they may acquire a personality of their own and so become worthy of such liberties. In my writing I have recommended study and the civic virtues, without which no redemption is possible”
For Mr. Duterte then, improving the quality of basic education in the Philippines is a legacy-making issue.
Michael Henry Ll. Yusingco is a lecturer at the Institute of Law of the University of Asia and the Pacific and Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Ateneo School of Government.

A glimpse into AIM and Ateneo’s data science graduate programs

By Patrizia Paola C. Marcelo
and Robert A. Vergara, Jr.
Digital Reporters
WITH THE GROWING demand for data scientists in today’s time of big data, machine learning, among others, and demand pegged to continue to outgrow supply (as said by McKinsey & Co.), two educational institutions in the Philippines have kick-started their own data science graduate programs.
The Asian Institute of Management (AIM) and the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) have launched their data science programs: both master’s degrees in data science. AIM is currently teaching its inaugural batch of 42 students, while ADMU is starting the program this year and will offer a dual-degree program joint with Queen Mary University London next year.

AIM
For AIM, the program is spearheaded by Christopher Monterola and Erika Fille Legara. Both have physics backgrounds and have years of experience in data science at the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR), under the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Singapore, with competencies in big data analytics, data science, and advanced analytics.
Ms. Legara said they got on board when AIM President and Dean Jikyeong Kang was preparing a program on data science or analytics. Mr. Monterola already heads the School of Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, where the program is under, while Ms. Legara said she “liked the idea of starting the first data science program in the country.”
The current enrolees have a diverse set of backgrounds, especially chosen by the school through a set of educational and work experience standards, with nearly half of them are sponsored by their private employers. Also part of the program are employees from government financial institutions.
Fresh graduates applying to the program must have knowledge in linear algebra, basic calculus, and background in fields including computer programming, and probability and statistics. Those with at least two years of work experience must have had experience preferably in data analysis and software engineering and have had at least two years of work experience with analytical tools.
The professors said that the program combines the theoretical side of the field with the practitioner side, in order to prepare the graduates of the program to be able to communicate well what they have learned in a business or organizational setting, where some top management or leadership may not easily understand the need for understanding and using data.
“We made sure all the right technical things are there, it’s not half-baked…The math, the fundamentals are there, but at the same time, we wanted to make sure it’s not detached from the more practical side,” Ms. Legara said.
“In AIM, we combine the technical aspect and business management side. If you’re a data scientist and you can’t read their [companies’] language, it’s difficult to implement something that’s beneficial.”
Looking forward, the data science professors aim for something bigger so that organizations in the Philippines will not have to look for data scientists as they might have gone abroad.
“We want to propagate data science in Visayas, Mindanao, outside Metro Manila,” Mr. Monterola said. The current batch already bodes well for this plan, Mindanao State University (MSU)-Iligan Institute of Technology has already expressed their interest in forming a data science program of their own, having sent their own representatives to the program.
Mr. Monterola added that they want to spark a historically “weak” collaboration between academe and industry. This is especially applicable today when all sectors are getting huge amounts of data with the need to properly use them.
“The academe wants novelty, something new, companies want value, and government wants impact,” Mr. Monterola said. “But they can work together, and all of them need to understand data.”
ATENEO
Meanwhile, ADMU partnered with Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) to create master’s programs in data science or big data, as well as media and arts technology.
“In this digital age we will need programs like big data for digital innovation and we will need renewed competency to navigate such strange new world,” ADMU President Jose Ramon Villarin said in a previous interview with BusinessWorld during the launch of the partnership late last year at the university in Quezon City.
“The digital economy will run on many engines. In such an economy the most important engine will be creativity and innovation,” Mr. Villarin said.
The university will choose 10 scholars for the first batch for the programs, which will run for 18 months. Selected students will study in ADMU for 12 months, and then stay in QMUL for six months.
The launch of such programs marks the preparation of the country’s education sector for a digital economy, which according to Mr. Villarin is “data‑intense, algorithm‑driven, efficient, fast, hyper‑connected, and personalized.”
“[What will be] more crucial to the economy of the future will be intelligent and creative contents and the new connections that these kinds of content can make among people from all over,” he said.
“For instance the Internet of Things is all about software connecting devices, people, and services. Disruption and obsolescence are happening not because of brick‑and‑mortar structures but because of much softer things like creative software and the creative integration of systems,” Mr. Villarin added.
DATA SCIENTISTS
Citing a report by US‑based research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc., Francis del Val, founder and President of Cobena Business Analytics & Strategy, Inc., said the global business intelligence and analytics software market is set to grow to $22.8 billion by the end of 2020. By the same period there will also be a demand for 1.7 million data scientists in the world.
According to Del Val, the Philippines has a “huge potential” to be a source of the world’s best data scientists. In five to 10 years, he said, the country could have an industry of “hundreds of thousands or maybe even half a million” data scientists.
“Here in the Philippines it is already happening. You can see that a lot of more modern organizations can now find better, more efficient way of moving around because they get to transport data, but equally what we are seeing right now is that companies who adapt big data are able to make smarter decisions,” he told SparkUp during the event.
However, the integration of such technology in the country is “just at the tip of the iceberg” as many companies remain “very reluctant to share their data and the government still has a lot to do in terms of releasing data to the public.”
“It’s very difficult to come up with a figure right now, but what we do know, though, is that the future is immense because we have a lot of consumers and consumers, of course, generate a lot of data,” he said.
 
Parts of this article, particularly that of the Ateneo data science program, were previously published at sparkup.ph under the title “Ateneo is offering a Master’s in big data by 2018 and we got all the deets here.”

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