Collaborating for competitive commerce
The Southern Tagalog Agriculture, Aquaculture & Natural Resources Research & Development Council (Stardec) is currently holding its 25th Regional Symposium on Research & Development Highlights concurrent with the 2nd Regional Techno Gabay Summit.
These gatherings are an important way of sharing information and ideas, and present opportunities for exploring the unfamiliar by exposing participants to new and innovative ways. There is, however, much that still needs to be done to realize the potential of these gatherings.
The organizers asked me to speak during the opening ceremonies and below is a summary of what I said. I hope it makes clear what we in management and the business sector might add to the discussions.
Our government has given our science and technology researchers in the areas of agriculture, aquaculture and natural resources a two-fold challenge worthy of their best efforts. The two co-equal challenges are, first, to help “stretch the envelope of knowledge” in our respective fields; and, the second, to help make life better for Filipinos by improving production and productivity, and by helping the Filipino diversify his products and services and make them more competitive not only in the Philippines but globally.
Last week we attended a panel discussion in the Manila FAME Exhibitions at the SMX in the Mall of Asia that showcased the best in Philippine products for export. Members of the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) came to listen to a panel discussion that featured two New York-based professionals, Calvin Tsao, an architect, and David Monn, a world-famous designer and founder of LCC. They addressed the questions of creating an excellent product or service and what it takes to make a national brand.
I Googled to get a few, less technical entries on what a “brand” is and what purpose it serves and these are what I got from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand) and About.Marketing.com (https://marketing.about.com/cs/brandmktg/a/whatisbranding.htm ):
“A brand is a ‘name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers;” and
“A strong brand is invaluable as the battle for customers intensifies day by day. It’s important to spend time investing in researching, defining and building your brand. After all, your brand is the source of a promise to your consumer. It’s a foundational piece in your marketing communication and one you do not want to be without.”
A brand represents a promise to the persons procuring our product or service. To create that brand, that image, the two panelists said that, and I hope I got them right:
1.) Whatever you offer must first be pertinent to the market; that is, it is useful, valuable to the market;
2.) The product or service must represent a quality the market wishes while being distinctly identified with you, in this case, a distinctive “Philippineness;”
3.) The product or service must be delivered with a consistency, that with every delivery the buyer can expect the same qualities; and
4.) The product must make a difference in the lives of those who avail of the service or use the product.
For our economy to grow, progress and prosper, Filipinos who make a living from or build businesses on agriculture, aquaculture and natural resources exploitation must create products and services pertinent to our and the global markets’ evolving needs. We must offer something distinctly Filipino and yet be seen a global product or service and these must be delivered consistently while ensuring that they make people’s lives better.
In the few years that I have been associated with the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural resources Research & Development (PCAARRD) of the Department of Science and Technology, I have become keenly aware of our government’s desire through PCAARRD to help our people improve their lives. At the same time, I have also become painfully aware that hard work, desire and sincerity are not enough.
Our people have worked hard at producing a range of products and services. Our scientists and technologists have been hard at work helping them improve those products and many of the processes involved in producing the products and making the services available. Government has tried to put in place a number of enabling and facilitating mechanisms. Yet, much of our work has not moved as much as we want and the improvements in lives have not happened for most. What has been missing?
Two years ago we were able to identify what we think is the missing element in these collaborations. We need not just the agricultural; aquaculture and natural resources producers. We need the post-harvest processors, the transportation people, the distributors and the retailers.
We need government at all levels of the market value chain. The national level may establish policy and provide the legal framework, but the real test of government resolve to help business and our people is at the local level, in the municipalities and the barangay (villages), where, as they say, “the rubber meets the road,” and where government action is needed to ensure that the cost of doing business is minimized in more ways than is obvious so that the products our people produce can be distributed and sold competitively.
We need research and development of the kind our current network of scientists and researchers provide so well. But we need market research of our local markets and of global markets. We need the research that will give us more efficient machines and tools to raise productivity from the harvesting to the retailing levels. We need researchers for packaging and food engineering. We need research dictated by market needs.
Let me give an example. In the last contest I was part of, there was an excellent research on assaying virus of the abaca plant, which would inform planters if a particular virus was present in plants in a plantation before it turned into a major blight. While the research was appreciated by the people who use abaca fiber, they told us that what they really need is research on how to make abaca fiber softer and stronger so that they can use it for designing high fashion clothes of distinctly Filipino designs, which have become quite a rave in Europe and North America. What was preventing wider use of the abaca cloth was that most of what is produced is brittle and ripped easily. Yet, it can make very attractive clothes when properly processed.
As a result of the experience, we encouraged PCAARRD, and its leadership promptly responded, to train its pool of scientists and researchers in business thinking. We just finished training three batches of PCAARRD scientists and researchers from all over the country. It is possible for us to duplicate that training by region or even by province to allow greater focus on specific groups and specific products.
I think local government executives, governors and mayors, can take the initiative by encouraging businesses, not just the local business people but the national business people, to collaborate with regional and local academics and producers in identifying the kinds of products and services that they would need for their businesses; in what qualities and characteristics and in what quantities; they can work out growing and processing schemes to help our local producers ramp up to the levels of production quantities and qualities they require, sharing the risks with them while the small producers are crawling their way towards walking straight and then running fast.
Local government can also ease the burden on our fledgling enterprises by providing incentives such as lowering of fees and the abolition of certain extraneous charges that tend to rack up the costs of produce. I believe people here know what I am talking about. The help you give your people will be returned sooner than you think, by way of trust in your administration and support for your initiatives.
In collaboration with national government, local executives can serve as their municipalities’ ambassadors to the outside world, not only for showing off their products, but in identifying partners overseas who will take care of marketing these products and even in investing in these businesses.
I think Philippine business must take a more proactive stance with regards to the efforts of our scientists and researchers to come up with research that, while stretching the envelope of knowledge, is also very pertinent to market needs.
For too long many (not all) business people and most academics (not all) have held each other at more than arm’s length, one party describing the other as being up-in-the-air and the other saying all-they-care-about-is-profits.
The communities have signified their intent to work with us. I think business can respond by reaching out and asking the government to convene a series of working meetings that should lead to, within the first quarter of the year 2013, a road map for this venture.
We have a good chance here to establish a multiparty collaboration of business, the community of producers and the government working in concert towards making the country a truly competitive and innovative global player. Let us not waste it.
(The author is the chairman of MAP Public-Private Partnership committee and a professor at the Asian Institute of Management. Feedback at [email protected]. For previous articles, visit <map.org.ph>.)
