. . . It’s the mind thing
Our tycoons, with the exception of a couple, did not have any resources – capital, technology or market access – to begin with. And precisely for that reason, we hold them in high esteem. But as a country we have had access to these resources for decades: What we did instead was erect barriers – clearly we needed to learn to walk after the Americans gave us independence, unfortunately we never wanted to let go our “trainer wheels”?
It is noteworthy that we have acknowledged the need to pursue technology acquisition from Filipinos overseas. No different from our acknowledgment that OFW remittances drive our economy?
Given that even in the best of times OFW remittances did not raise our GDP beyond a mere fraction of our neighbors’, our challenge is: How do we optimize or get a major boost from technology acquisition from Filipinos overseas? How do we optimize the use and benefit of a resource for that matter – for example, employ them to aggressively become globally competitive? What is the difference between the resources that had been available to us for decades against those available today through OFWs? Are we in fact narrowing our options, given, for example, that foreign-born Americans and visitors are producing more scientists than native-born? We ought not to be linear in thinking and tapping resources – because competition is about optimizing options, “make versus buy”, e.g., every fraction of margin is crucial while adding value. We tend to want to “make” and “own” and monopolize; and be a big fish in a small pond? Are we again falling into the trap of our inward-looking bias – which has held back the Japanese, for example?
Extraneous-resource factors are not our problem – they have always been there to tap. It is the internal factors that are our problem: the mind thing – everything starts in the mind!
Our neighbors and ex-communist countries were able to tap into these resources much later than when they were first available to us. For instance, Eastern European countries have lined up to solicit foreign investment; and get US bases into their countries while we took pride in getting rid of them. There is sovereignty and there is sovereignty – or the pragmatic use of resources. For example, these countries can negotiate with the US to develop defense-related industries within their countries to support and supply these bases, with equity ownership available to locals – everything is negotiable except when the mind is closed! The writer had early on talked about product-architecture modeling and that is a back-of-the-envelope example: these countries can move up the value chain – for instance, from the low value-added entertainment industry (e.g., night clubs outside these bases) to the higher valued-added defense-related industry with technology and investment principally provided by the US. (GE, for example, has established aircraft-related businesses in China.)
We seem to operate at a sub-optimized level, ceding ground to competition in the process: We ought to first and foremost recognize the need to change; and then decide and commit that we want to change? And then act on that change – and all the mental blocks and barriers that we have erected for decades would go away?
That is a painful effort to make because instinctively we believe in “business as usual – that: our culture, our ways, our tradition, our religion, our language and whatever else motivates us are sacrosanct, reminiscent of Christ’s encounters with the Pharisees? That our “quality of life” is to behold? That hierarchy offers the way of life we cherish? But what about the vast number who are lower in the totem pole? Nothing wrong with being human – but the key is to solve our problems as a nation, lest we together spiral down the abyss?
We can take grass to a horse but we can’t have the horse eat it – the NIH or the “not invented here” syndrome.
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