IsangConcepts » Philippine Innovation

Acts of Random Kindess Philippines

Matt — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:55:45 +0000

The main reason why IsangConcepts exists is because we want to be agents of change focusing on Philippine Innovation as our battle ground.

Last November 28, 2009 the IsangConcepts team performed an ARK (Acts of Random Kindness) around Ayala Heights because. yeah Because hahaha

ARK (Acts of Random Kindness) is actually a clothing company in the United Kingdom, Ireland to be precise. visit them at www.arkhq.com and add them to facebook. Most importantly spread some love around !

Here are some pictures:

a bad idea*

All you need is some old board, spray pain, a few packs of marshmallows and maybe an hour of free time and BAM ! you can now go ARKing !

Sometimes ……

We also noticed that Matthew Cua goes crazy upon smelling spray paint, must be some kind of chemist thingy.

Drive-by Marshmallow ATTACK !!!

Slide-by MarshMallow Attack !

We just attacked people walking around, giving them marshmallows. Most enjoyed it, quite a few decided that accepting marshmallows from strangers is evil XD It is also too random too for them.

Finally Free Marshmallows may mean Free Parking. hehehe

ARK ON !

-Squirrel (Matt), Barney (Kylo), Squared (JB)

www.arkhq.com

Innovation in Design

Matt — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:10:56 +0000

Dr. Greg Tangonan giving the opening remarks.

Last Saturday (August 1, 2009) the newly established Ateneo Innovation Center hosted its first Seminar/Talk on Innovation in Ateneo’s SEC Lecture Hall B.

French Exchange Student Maxime Fournier presents on ZipLux

4th year ECE (Electrical and Communications Engineering) students for their Management Engineering class under Dr. Greg Tangonan and Engineer Cesar Pineda presented Business Ideas inspired by Business Week’s IDEA Design Awards 2008.

ZipLux

View more presentations from Matthew Cua.

With over 80 in attendance including some people in industry and in academe the first ever Ateneo Innovation Center is truly a success.

Innovation in Design Seminar.

This seminar unlike other engineering seminars is business oriented, students were actually required to dedicate 1 slide to talk about the business application to the Philippine market by stealing the idea, improving the idea or thinking of other and creative uses.

The Ateneo Innovation Center will be hosting another talk by Inovent the makers of the ilumina iTV and the only Industrial Design Firm in the Philippines on August 28, 2009 at SOM 111 (Ching Tan) from 4:30 pm till 6:00pm.

The IsangConcepts team especially Matthew Cua is highly active in the Ateneo Innovation Center and is producing the new webhome of the Ateneo Innovation Center. If you want to learn more about the Ateneo Innovation Center simply visit the site : www.ateneoinnovation.org or email Matthew Cua. The Ateneo Innovation Center aims to be the center of academic innovation in the Philippines.

Talks and Seminars on Economist’s Technology Quarterly, Venture Capitalism, Technopreneurship and many more will be hosted by the Ateneo Innovation Center.

Stay tuned !

The Innovation Mall of the Philippines

Matt — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:44:58 +0000

Mall of Innovation :

There are no less than 110 malls in Metro Manila alone not including supermarkets such as Shop Wise and S&R ! This figure includes super malls like SM megamall and tiangge (flea market stalls) malls such as Divisoria. Adding all the floor space of all SM malls of the Metro Manila we will have approximately 5,166,336 sqm and that is only with SM Malls ! Taking into account every single mall in Metro Manila we would get to around 10,000,000 sqm of floor space which would equate to roughly 1 sqm per person in Metro Manila.

In the Philippines the mall and retail industry comprise nearly 11% of GNP, and 33% of the entire service sector, which is HUGE ! The malls also represent the consumeristic nature of Philippine Society, a buying nation. In fact, it is precisely this reason why effect of the financial meltdown in the United States did not affect us that much. The power of the mall is here to stay in our culture for many more years. But what are other uses of Malls other than centers of consumerism ? can malls also be a catalyst for value creation other than shopping, movies and eating ? I believe so !

The idea is to create a Mall of Innovation or even Malls of Innovation ! Creating a hotbed of innovation by placing empowered, passionate and innovative people under one roof creating an environment of innovation and creativity.

Vision of the Mall :

Mall hours : 24/7 because Innovation doesn’t rest (Midnight jolts of energy and passion ? the Mall of Innovation is open!)

The Mall of Innovation is just like any other mall, big, spacious, bright and clean. The major difference is that instead of retail outlets there are workshops/offices/concept shops/concept restaurants. There are tables and chairs everywhere. Rolling whiteboards are a common site. Toys are littered throughout the mall to foster creativity. Healthy restaurants and fast food stores litter the Mall to provide healthy nourishment. There are countless meeting rooms from open air, closed, and possibly even under water.

Stores are workshop stores, people can see what you are doing and drop by to ask how you are doing. Friends pass by and cheers up their co-innovator. People looking for inspiration, just walked around the mall until the walk turned into a jog and finally into a mad dash to create. If a industrial designer on the first floor needs to know something about certain materials for his new LED lamp or if the design would work, he would take an escalator to the 4th floor where his fabricator friend work.

Employees of the office next door, comes by and shares some cookies. You talk about a new book, and by the conversation is over all of you have new products you can’t wait to bring to market.

Investors come visit, checks with the concierge and tells them that they are looking to invest their money in something. The concierge gives them business plans ready to be funded. The investors takes them and sits on one of the sofas and browses through them while drinking coffee. By the end of the day, a few million pesos has been invested a new company is born.

This is the Mall of Innovation.

Philippine Innovation Avalanche

Matt — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:41:59 +0000

A quick Google Search :

Philippine Innovation – 1,260,000 Hits

Innovation in the Philippines - 4,110,000 Hits

Compare this against

Korean Innovation – 2,880,000 Hits / Innovation in Korea – 7,480,000 Hits

Thai Innovation – 1,490,000 Hits/ Innovation in Thailand – 4,510,000 Hits

Indonesian Innovation – 2,290,000 Hits/ Innovation in Indonesia – 5,570,000 Hits

Taiwan Innovation - 4,530,000 Hits / Innovation in Thailand – 1,910,000 Hits

From this alone, it seems that the Philippines is a bit behind compared to other countries in Asia on innovation. Ask about Philippine Innovation or Innovation in the Philippines and you’ll get responses like “Wishful Thinking” and “Hopefully it would happen” but what people are missing is that the Philippine Innovation Avalanche has begun and it is getting larger and larger every moment.

Some Examples of the Avalanche:

1.) Inovent - (www.inoventdesign.com) – The only Industrial Design firm in the Philippines and recently even large and supposed to be “invincible” marketing/advertising firms have bowed down to Inovent. And with their launch of the Ilumina iTV (http://inoventrevolution.wordpress.com), with the aim to launch the Philippine’s first consumer technology brand like Samsung and Apple.

2.) Rise of Social Entrepreneurship – with Hapinoy/Microventures (www.hapinoy.com) and Rags2Riches (www.rags2riches.ph) lead by Mark Ruiz, Reese Fernandez, Bam Aquino, Rajo Laurel and many more and they act as the vanguards and trail blazers of Philippine Social Entrepreneurship. Now small social enterprises tackling the problem of water lilies to waterless toilet concepts are spawning in the country bringing about change in the way business is done in the country in a new and radical way where the bottom line is not profit but changing the world into a better place.

3.) Centers of Innovation – with centers of Innovation such as the Ateneo Innovation Center (http://innovation.ateneo.edu/bin/view/Main/WebHome) encouraging students to do innovation and reactivate the creativity that traditional school has beaten out of the students. The Ateneo Innovation Center has for example launched the Philippine’s first SMS Quality of Service Experiments and is currently conducting Algae for Oil experiments that has recently gotten the attention of the Japanese. Although such centers today are still relatively unknown, the more innovation these centers crank out the more known and appreciated they would be. These are the places where the real action is really happening.

The Ateneo Innovation Center is headed by Greg Tangonan Ph.D.

4.) Innovative Filipino Teams entering International Competitions and winning – Rags2Riches (www.rags2riches.ph) has set the mood when they won the Business in Development (BiD) Challange in the Netherlands. Recently the Philippine Team “Beleavers” (Tim Huelva, Karl Satintigan and Kim Samson) won the HSBC Regional Awards with their ‘Arekal Leaf Tableware’. High School Students of the Philippine Science High School that make up “Team Lagablab” also won the First Robotics Competition 2009 in Hawaii .

As technologies become cheaper and more available thanks to Social Enterprises, Corporations and NGOs the Philippine Innovation Avalanche will only grow stronger and move faster.

But innovation is not only confined in the business world, also in the world of NGOs and even in the classroom, new brave people are doing things differently, thinking new thoughts and doing amazing things.

Photo Credits Why Not? Forum

Why Not ? Forum (www.whynotforum.com) the TED.com of the Philippines has been inspiring people to Think new thoughts, Share big dreams and do brave things. With the recent Why Not ? Forum 6 as one of the most successful Why Not? Forums to date. As Why Not ? Forum nudges people to ask Why Not ? the avalanche of innovation will only grow faster and stronger.

I could go on forever talking about innovation everywhere in the Philippines like these students in Mindanao creating a CNN like newscast (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYHYR7svEHo) and the Philippine Electric Jeepney and Tricycles.

As technology becomes more and more democratized and easy to use the effects are spectacular. The only and biggest challenge and obstacle for the Philippine Innovation Avalanche is paradigm. We, Filipinos, still think that we are not good enough, that we could never reach the status of awesomeness. But the thing is that we can, we can be awesome ! but awesome in our own way.

As Floy Quintos said in Why Not ? Forum 6 Let’s be world-class in our own way because no matter what we do we will always be Filipinos, and as Entrepbuff (www.entrepbuff.com) asked in Why Not ? Forum 6 : ” Why Not rebuild a nation doing what they love to do ? ”

Right now, most of the nation’s resources are tied up to the old men and women of this country and people who would like the status quo to remain. If only these resources where available to the multitude of entrepreneurs and innovators the Philippines will be on the path to awesome growth and possibly even to 1st world status. But the lack of capital and resources has always been a trivial obstacle to entrepreneurs and innovators, they will always find a way because as Mark Ruiz teaches, it is “Innovate or Die” and if you remember Sun Tzu’s Art of War, on death ground people will fight like caged animals. Right now it is Innovate or Die, we are on death ground and when we are in this mindset the only way is up !

Welcome to the Philippine Innovation Avalanche, and we here at IsangConcepts plan to watch, document and even add more momentum to this Philippine Innovation Avalanche and we hope you would to.

There is no where to hide, running is futile, this avalanche will get to you …it is just a matter of time. So why not ride it instead ?

Oh just in case you are interested the IsangConcepts is planning to get into this Innovation xD

If you have any tips on Philippine Innovation just email us @ Team[at]isangisla.com and we will feature it here in this blog. Help us continue the Philippine Innovation Avalanche

- Matthew Cua

“Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
are the ones who do.”

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