Food Security Must Save from Hunger Errant E. coli and Toxic Additives 314.0
Food security is often focused more on production and distribution and less on food safety and quality. Yet recent experiences in Germany and in China and Taiwan highlight two types of risks to avoid to food security and safety. As design thinking, it is often more effective and efficient to design appropriate controls and contingencies [...]
Beyond Productivity – Competitiveness or Innovation? 245.0
In a telephone conversation, a dear friend gave a reaction to the series of posts that SYNTHESiST had on productivity – on Frederick Taylor, Six Sigma, Paul Krugman on competitiveness and McKinsey and design thinking. She mentions that they have moved beyond productivity to competitiveness as the higher goal. This post integrates my views on [...]
IDEO Design Thinking Breaks the Productivity Frontier 242.0
Consultants’ advice on productivity improvement, as branded management products, evolve from new insights found in social science research and in empirical practice. IDEO’s Design Thinking is one such clear and late stage innovation in the business’s search for continuous productivity improvement. Design Thinking’s success and arrival in the Philippines is evidenced by entry into local [...]
Six Sigma Raises Productivity to the Effective Limit 241.0
The productivity surge in American business from 1980 through 2000 was driven by innovations like Six Sigma. Motorola first innovated on Six Sigma in the late 1980s as a method to manage process variations for quality improvement in manufacturing that, linked with business strategy, ultimately yielded improved productivity in the whole business. In the 1990s. [...]
Looking for a Better Way – to Eat Tacos 239.0
I love the tacos at Pancake House. I take two at a time with whatever I order. Sitting before my usual yesterday, I wondered if there is a better way to eat it without scattering cheese bits all over my plate. IE classmates, if you know a better way, please share by return email. I [...]
Philippines-Fabricated Rotary Filling Machine 188.0
This hardy Filipino-fabricated machine is cause for cheer I could hardly contain my excitement at seeing a Filipino-fabricated rotary filler being set up yesterday – a working product from the minuscule Philippine machinery industry is on the ground before me! YAY! as my young friends shout. And LOL with that. Fighting against economic policies like [...]
Learning Curve Effect of Classic Chinese-Filipino Pricing Policy 182.0
Entrepreneur-students of the 1st EDP at AIM help draw an insight Scholars and analysts often derive their theories after practitioners in the real world have been implementing them successfully for years. At the first ever Entrepreneurship Development Program (EDP) at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), my class found a key insight linking the classic [...]
Learning Innovation Systems from Small Developed Nations 178.0
Hypothesis on systems of innovation for emerging markets from Denmark, Israel and New Zealand Filipinos, in general, are America-centered especially in learning about new things. In one sense, this is correct as America leads the world in many technologies. In another, it is not appropriate because there can be no bigger disparities than between America [...]
Innovation – Closer-to-Market or Closer-to-Science? 160.0
Close-to-market innovations work best for the Philippines Reading yesterday’s issue (January 19, 2010) of the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of the United States of America affirms the correctness of my proposal for innovations in an emerging market like the Philippines to be in applications closer to the market than to science. [...]
Philippines As Emerging Market 157.0
Let us stop flagellating ourselves with negative news From 2005, Goldman Sachs identified the Philippines as one of eleven countries “that could potentially have a BRIC-like impact in rivalling the G7.” More recently, in September 2009, the FTSE Global Equity Index Series classified the Philippines as one of seventeen secondary emerging countries with regards to [...]
Technology Innovation Strategy for Emerging Markets 156.0
Catching up and leapfrogging is hard; Improving winner industries in captured growth markets with enabler technologies easier Each country, because of its level of development, will have its own bounded innovation ecosystem that is intertwined with that of the rest of the world. The Philippines, as typical of emerging markets, does not lead in any [...]
Learning Interactions Make for National Innovation Systems 154.0
Adapting Professor Bengt Ake Lundvall’s ideas for the Philippines Productivity is the true source of wealth for any nation, in the final analysis. And sustaining productivity requires for that nation to innovate continuously on its productivity base. Nations follow different strategies for innovation. The Philippines has survived through a strategy of trading services – by [...]