To raise Philippine R&D capability, production efficiency Think tank seeks strong industry-academe ties

MANILA, Philippines - Strengthening industry-academe linkages will help the Philippines improve its research and design capability, allowing the country to shift from basic manufacturing to higher-end production that has been achieved by more competitive economies, according to a new discussion paper from the Philippine Institute for Developmental Studies.

“As global economic competition intensifies, there is a growing urgency to level up the country’s R&D skills for sustained trade development through closer ties between the business and academic communities,“ the report said.

According to the paper, the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report of 2012-2013 categorizes the Philippines as transitioning from the factor-driven stage of competitiveness—where a nation competes on the basic factors of production such as raw materials and labor pool—to the efficiency-driven stage, in which a country begins to develop more efficient production processes and increase product quality.

The country’s ultimate goal should be to reach the third stage, the innovation-driven stage, in which a country sustains higher wages and standard of living by enabling businesses to compete in creating new or unique products.

“To reach that goal, among the items that it has to do is to vastly improve its R&D innovation system, in which it is currently ranked 94th in a field of 144 economies. An aspect of such a system is university-industry collaboration in R&D, in which it is ranked 79th,” the report added.

It identified four forms of industry-academe linkage activities needed to generate intellectual property: collaborative R&D, commissioned research, technology licensing, and the creation of spinoff companies.

“The Philippines is still in an emergent stage in all these forms. It has concerns that are the same as or similar to those of some other developing ASEAN countries,” said report author Reynaldo Vea.

The good news is that Philippine legislation is generally conducive to the development of R&D capability in both academe and industry. Unfortunately, Vea added, S&T manpower-building programs and R&D expenditures do not reach their full potential as enabled by law.

“The legal environment in which to do R&D work, including collaborative projects, is, in general, enabling. However, the promise of certain laws has not been realized,” he continued.

Consequently, the magnitude of R&D endeavors in the Philippines falls behind those of countries that have successfully built upon their R&D capacity over the past decades. It has also led to a “feeble” industry-academe collaboration in R&D, despite the widening of linkage modes between schools and industry.

To boost R&D in the country, the paper recommends launching a massive S&T manpower-building program in science high schools and public and private higher-education institutions (HEIs).

This includes transforming some state universities and colleges (SUCs) into research universities and creating a university of science and technology, so these may serve as innovation bastions and sources of highly skilled young scientists for industry.

The study also pushes for more incentives to firms that partner with the academe in R&D work, as well as changing regulations that stymie R&D activities to allow, for example, the appointment of foreigners as full-time professors in SUCs.

And given limited resources, Vea suggests determining priority areas for R&D funding based on an analysis of the long-term benefits of supporting certain technologies and sciences.         â€“ Philexport