THE BUSINESS OF SCIENCE
For their ideas to see the light of day, Filipino scientists are urged to learn to speak the language of business
By Grace Roxas, Contributing Writer
Now that the country is starting to show aces in terms of research talent and resource potential, especially in biotechnology, the Filipino scientific community should also develop business smarts to bring more germinating ideas to fruition.
This was the consensus in a recent forum that brought together academics doing R&D in the country's top universities with other players in the health-technology space. Organized by the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development with the University of the Philippines-National Institutes of Health (UP-NIH), the one-day conference featured presentations of commercially promising scientific research by UP (Diliman, Los Baños, and Manila campuses), Ateneo de Manila University, and the University of Santo Tomas (UST).
"There is no dearth of ideas. In our national universities ... progress has been made," said Dr. Federico Macaranas of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) which hosted the event. "However, what needs to be done is bring them to the marketplace. Show 'proof of concept.' Can it work even in a limited market?"
Outside the ivory tower
The road to the commercial success of local research needs to be paved with measures that may well redefine how local universities usually interface with potential consumers of their research outputs.
At the very least, there should be more institutional memory built into research projects regularly churned out by the universities as part of their standard academic requirement for postgrad students. Entrepreneur Ramon Castillo of Innovatronix Inc., a local company that built its success on a technology-driven product profile, observed that a common setback encountered when sourcing technology for commercialization with universities is the latter's poor follow-through on their own research projects.
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"There's a big difference between a product that is ready for commercialization and a product that is ready for alpha-testing or demo," Castillo said. "But even in a demo, the typical problem is the proponent is no longer connected with the institution. Therefore, the technology is lost forever." He adds that research collaboration with the academe seems to work better when the research is commissioned by the company in advance for a certain fee. "Maybe, it's best to look out for a sponsor first before a research is done, somebody who is willing to market the product or has experience marketing it," he suggested.
Some institutions are more advanced than the others in infusing market savvy into research. With the guidance of former United States-based Filipino scientist Dr. Gregory Tangonan, Ateneo de Manila is reframing its research capability through a multiyear, multidisciplinary approach.
Instead of asking students to craft their own projects from scratch, they are asked to join existing faculty-driven research so that each initiative moves forward to its commercially viable stage through the cumulative action of students and faculty.
"Our objective is to get industrial partners very, very early," said Tangonan, who heads the Ateneo Technology Innovation Center, a multidisciplinary research arm that "sits someplace among the university's different departments."
Tangonan's vision is to develop an industry-associate program similar to those based in the prestigious California Tech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We want to behave like a start-up [company]. When you look at a start-up company, it does everything: from technology to marketing and finance. Because innovation is not just about having a discovery but also how it creates value in a marketplace," he said.
Having the mindset of a start-up also means not being inhibited by a lack of resources at the outset. "Lots of us have this notion that when you don't have a lot of money, you can't do great things," Tangonan observed. He noted that funding could come from nontraditional sources. In promoting social entrepreneurship, for example, even funding agencies not usually associated with scientific research, such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and OxFam can be tapped. One such technology-driven, social-entrepreneurship program being developed by Ateneo is a personal medical database that can be updated through a cell phone.
For their part, the investors are not exactly idling by-waiting for the first comer with a brilliant and ready-to-market package. There are also some stirrings towards meeting early funding requirements, especially for the red-hot biotech market.
Venture capitalist Daniel Pagulayan, whose company has been involved as a late-stage investor in some technology-based firms, noted that there is now a growing interest in the formation of a local biotech fund to support early-stage research or those not yet supported by a track record of marketability. He also observed the emergence of specialized consultancies focused on biotech and "angel investors"-supporters of early stage companies with commercially promising ideas that need a lot of funding.
For the academe to take better advantage of these opportunities, he echoed Tangonan's recommendation toward a more multidisciplinary collaboration among different university departments and beyond that, grater linkage among the universities themselves. "In moving a product forward, you probably need to employ higher technology. It's not only a single component. There's a lot of patents that will go into an actual application. A cell phone, for example, is made up of different patents," he explained.
Waking up to global opportunities
While Pagulayan correlated the growing number of Filipinos doing research abroad with a heightening of technology awareness in the country over the past two to three years, he said the nagging question is why can't these Filipino scientists do research here instead? On the other hand, he knows of companies who operate their research departments here but are nevertheless structured as offshore companies for reasons having to do with intellectual-property regulations, taxes, and ease of operations.
To the extent that other countries might be more appreciative of our native scientific assets than we are, the country's charms in terms of research talent and rich biodiversity might be more of a double-edged sword in the context of long-term development.
Commenting on the exodus of scientists to better-equipped (and better-paying) institutions abroad, AIM's Macaranas warned of a particular danger in a global world. "If you don't have the loyalty of these people to the Philippines, then what happens to our science and technology? We will be the source of brains but will be left with nothing if we don't know how to negotiate," he said.
He said the country should learn to use its rich flora and fauna as a bargaining chip for negotiating a good long-term deal for itself. "If a UP professor can be pirated by Utah but the natural resources [for doing the research] are available in the Philippines, there's no reason why you can't do the research here. That's why it is important in the management of technology that we preserve our biodiversity," he stressed.
And it's not too late to tap the talents of overseas Filipinos who have made it big abroad-if only to appeal to their pangs of guilt over leaving the country. Macaranas said that if we have to indulge our penchant for getting foreign consultants, it should be among the ranks of qualified overseas Filipinos through the revival of a science and technology advisory council composed of Filipino expats.
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