New export road map to be drafted”, says a news article. And it drew the writer’s attention, and led him to the EDC’s (Export Development Council) website. So far we have 3 groups in government pursuing strategic industries to boost the country’s competitiveness?
The EDC had earlier spelled out (for 2005-2007) what they called interventions to support specific industry clusters. And the writer perused two in particular: electronics and food. Clearly the West can share a thing or two about competitiveness: for instance, their R&D mantra is “start with the end in view”. It simply means that instead of figuring out the first step of an initiative, we must first ascertain what the end looks like. And the preceding steps (i.e., the vital few!) must be geared to the attainment of that end goal. How does that work in developing our electronics and food initiatives?
If we go to a supermarket we won’t miss the strong presence of Nestlé products, for example. And if we visit their website we will even get a sense of their business: “Nestlé is the world's leading Nutrition, Health and Wellness company. We are committed to increasing the nutritional value of our products while improving the taste. We achieve this through our brands and with initiatives like the Nutritional Compass and 60/40+.”
The key is to understand how global companies view the industry and their businesses. For instance, in our own food initiative we can adopt an approach similar to Nestlé’s in creating high value-added products: (a) deliver the specific benefits (for example) of nutrition, health and wellness, and (b) win the consumer’s trust via well-developed branded products. To that end, our industry needs a major break from tradition: raise their investment especially in R&D and product development, quality assurance and marketing, including consumer insights. Nestlé spends over 2% of revenues (twice the industry norm) in R&D; while we as a nation spend less than the industry. Clearly we’re not geared to be competitive. The writer opened an impressive, export-quality looking Philippine branded nuts, vacuumed sealed and all, but the quality of the nuts inside was not worth the expensive packaging; and foreigners have complained about this before – and in some cases the can is rusted by the time it gets to a store shelf overseas! This is a waste of investment meant to establish trusted branded products, which we can’t afford!
To truly understand the industry, we can invite representatives from major global companies to share their insights. And if we do, the interaction can open our eyes (and theirs!) to partnership opportunities: from agriculture to manufacturing to marketing to sales and distribution, locally and beyond.
We can go through a similar exercise with electronics or ICT (Information & Communication Technology) or BPO: in order to develop a truly globally competitive industry initiative we ought to pick the brains of major industry players who set the tone for and define the industry. For instance, have we considered inviting Bill Gates or some respected personality in ICT to edify us on the product architecture of the BPO industry? High value-added products and services come to light when we “start with the end in view” – it pulls us from being stuck to the past!
We can move up the value chain of our strategic industries, beyond dried mangoes and semi-conductors, for example – but we don’t have to do it by ourselves: we should make globalization work for us!
The bottom line, always: the revenues we need to generate across these strategic industries must cover our GDP shortfall – to the extent of 80% over a 5-year period of our incremental GDP target of $100B, for example.
The EDC had earlier spelled out (for 2005-2007) what they called interventions to support specific industry clusters. And the writer perused two in particular: electronics and food. Clearly the West can share a thing or two about competitiveness: for instance, their R&D mantra is “start with the end in view”. It simply means that instead of figuring out the first step of an initiative, we must first ascertain what the end looks like. And the preceding steps (i.e., the vital few!) must be geared to the attainment of that end goal. How does that work in developing our electronics and food initiatives?
If we go to a supermarket we won’t miss the strong presence of Nestlé products, for example. And if we visit their website we will even get a sense of their business: “Nestlé is the world's leading Nutrition, Health and Wellness company. We are committed to increasing the nutritional value of our products while improving the taste. We achieve this through our brands and with initiatives like the Nutritional Compass and 60/40+.”
The key is to understand how global companies view the industry and their businesses. For instance, in our own food initiative we can adopt an approach similar to Nestlé’s in creating high value-added products: (a) deliver the specific benefits (for example) of nutrition, health and wellness, and (b) win the consumer’s trust via well-developed branded products. To that end, our industry needs a major break from tradition: raise their investment especially in R&D and product development, quality assurance and marketing, including consumer insights. Nestlé spends over 2% of revenues (twice the industry norm) in R&D; while we as a nation spend less than the industry. Clearly we’re not geared to be competitive. The writer opened an impressive, export-quality looking Philippine branded nuts, vacuumed sealed and all, but the quality of the nuts inside was not worth the expensive packaging; and foreigners have complained about this before – and in some cases the can is rusted by the time it gets to a store shelf overseas! This is a waste of investment meant to establish trusted branded products, which we can’t afford!
To truly understand the industry, we can invite representatives from major global companies to share their insights. And if we do, the interaction can open our eyes (and theirs!) to partnership opportunities: from agriculture to manufacturing to marketing to sales and distribution, locally and beyond.
We can go through a similar exercise with electronics or ICT (Information & Communication Technology) or BPO: in order to develop a truly globally competitive industry initiative we ought to pick the brains of major industry players who set the tone for and define the industry. For instance, have we considered inviting Bill Gates or some respected personality in ICT to edify us on the product architecture of the BPO industry? High value-added products and services come to light when we “start with the end in view” – it pulls us from being stuck to the past!
We can move up the value chain of our strategic industries, beyond dried mangoes and semi-conductors, for example – but we don’t have to do it by ourselves: we should make globalization work for us!
The bottom line, always: the revenues we need to generate across these strategic industries must cover our GDP shortfall – to the extent of 80% over a 5-year period of our incremental GDP target of $100B, for example.
The Philippine Economy sees industry very differently, while China positioned itself to be the worlds manufacturer and India made itself an IT leader. I think the Philippines is happy to be the people exporter.
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