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I’m convinced that about half of what separates the
successful entrepreneurs from the nonsuccessful ones is
pure perseverance.—Steve Jobs (1955 - ), Interview, 1995
Innovation is the specific instrument of
entrepreneurship... the act that endows resources with a
new capacity to create wealth.—Peter Drucker (1909 -
2005), Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 1985
CONGRATULATIONS to Joyce Anne Cruz, Reynaline Tugade and
Christina Limbo from the University of the
Philippines
for winning HSBC’s business plan competition in Hong
Kong.
Their
victory in this prestigious competition is important as
it seems to signal the growing interest among the youth
to become entrepreneurs. The Philippines needs this kind
of spirit among the young. This is the only way we can
generate enough jobs in the country and address poverty.
Right
now, official statistics say the jobless rate in the
Philippines stands at 7.4 percent and underemployment
18.9 percent. These numbers translate to 2.5 million
jobless people and more than six million people who are
unhappy in their jobs. These are huge numbers,
considering that the Philippines has been growing quite
decently in the last three or five years.
The
employment outlook has actually been improving lately,
but it is obvious that jobs have not grown fast enough
to soak up joblessness despite rising overseas placement
and the growth of services employment. This trend could
largely be due to the fact that economic growth—in the
Philippines as well as the rest of the Asia-Pacific
region—has been technology–driven. The immediate
beneficiaries of such growth, therefore, are skilled
workers or people who have gone to college.
Also, it
appears that the relentless search for efficiencies by
the manufacturing sector in response to stiffer foreign
competition is forcing them to scrimp on labor costs,
thus making them a bit more conservative in their hiring
decisions.
What
this trend suggests is that the country needs help from
our economic entrepreneurs to expand job opportunities.
We need them because they are intrepid souls who start
new business organizations despite adversity and
difficulties. But where do we get all these
entrepreneurs? From the younger generation represented
by the likes of Cruz, Tugade and Limbo.
Based on
anecdotal evidence, what sets the Philippines apart from
the dragon economies of her neighbors is this low level
of entrepreneurship—ironically, in a country where it’s
often been said that small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
account for 90 percent of the economy.
That’s
the general impression, anyway. Historical circumstances
dictate so. For so long, despite the abundance of SMEs,
the Philippine business landscape has been dominated by
political manipulators who do business through
connections, special privileges and government
incentives. This practice was common during the Marcos
dictatorship when friends and relatives of cronies
cornered juicy deals through state-sponsored monopolies
and fiefs.
The same
rent-seeking behavior, albeit manifested in other forms,
pervaded all post-Edsa administrations. The result was
that we have a generation or two of Filipinos who have
grown to associate entrepreneurship and the profit
motive with social “exploitation.”
Hence,
many of the country’s population in their late thirties
and older came to associate “serving the people” with
going underground as revolutionaries as well as doing
charity and “civil society” work; sadly, many of these
ventures proved unsustainable when the funds from
charities in Europe drained, especially after the
collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Lacking
the ethos of risk–taking and entrepreneurship, the
career goals of many in these generations focused mostly
on gaining employment in the corporate sector (which is
narrow), the bureaucracy, academe and overseas. Some of
those who came before them and didn’t have the knack for
growing a business or simplistically associated pursuit
of profit with selfishness just copped out: they
withdrew from society as hippies who grew long hair,
took fewer baths, jammed in the community band, smoked
pot and played Frisbee.
Now,
things appear to be changing for the better. The younger
generation—sick and tired of chasing jobs that leave
them unsatisfied and empty—appear to have a changing
view of their options in life. If they can’t find jobs,
they might as well create jobs for themselves.
There’s
no statistical evidence on this trend yet, but the
growing popularity of entrepreneurship seminars and
events initiated by do-gooders like Joey Concepcion, the
increasing circulation of publications on
entrepreneurship, the rise of entrepreneurial schools
(Vivien Tan’s school for entrepreneurship is an
example), the continuing popularity of AIM’s
entrepreneurship courses, to cite some examples, are
possible proofs.
Recently, the popularity of innovative business models
like that of Chikka.com, providing communication
services to this text-crazy generation which combines
high technology, venture capital and tech-savvy young
business leaders, seems to support this trend. The
faculty and students of Ateneo’s department for
electronics and communications engineering lately formed
Blue Chips International, providing microelectronics
design and software services for global
corporations—this seems to indicate a continuing spark
of entrepreneurial energies among the young, lately
validated by the victory of the three UP students.
Of
course, the younger generations today are growing up
with a changed social ethos. These are the generations
who grew up idolizing Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve
Jobs of Apple, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Jerry Yang of
Yahoo!, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, and Chad
Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube—rebels and iconoclasts
who trail-blazed the brave new world of the Information
Revolution and made money for themselves beyond their
wildest dreams.
Besides
generating jobs, entrepreneurs are important to society
for performing other socially beneficial functions.
Usually, entrepreneurs are leaders and visionaries with
innovative ideas that can change society. Many of them
think out of the box to provide tangible solutions to
real economic and social problems. Many of them
eventually become effective political leaders who
transform their own communities.
If we
could have more of them—and fast—if society (schools and
business leaders) could nurture and guide more of them,
entrepreneurs might yet revolutionize this country, a
social transformation that could make Karl Marx blush. |
