Jay Bernardo Shouts Lets Go for an Army of Entrepreneurs 231.0

Jay Bernardo, a serial entrepreneur himself, has been passionate about teaching entrepreneurship since I first met him sometime mid-1990s.

Lets Go (an acronym for Leading Entrepreneurs Toward Seizing Global Opportunities) began as a training caseroom on entrepreneurship for JAD Manufacturing, Inc. employees, then Jay Bernardo’s flagship venture. It eventually became a training room for all types of enterprises for the wider community.

Then, Jay Bernardo formally made Lets Go a foundation primarily engaged in training entrepreneurs.

As I write today, Jay and Lets Go are embarking on a bigger social enterprise with IT-enabled mass teaching of entrepreneurship to all public high school students. But that is getting ahead of an interesting story.

Context and Opportunity-seeking for teaching entrepreneurship as social enterprise. Here is a really astounding bit of information:

out of 100 public school students who enroll in Grade 1, only 66 graduate from elementary, 42 finish high school and 14 finish college.

Jay Bernardo has an unusual talent for opportunity-seeking; he can see opportunity in a blank wall as well as in a cluttered one. In fact, among the five gurus at the Asian Center of Entrepreneurship, he is the designated master in opportunity-seeking.

From the very discouraging data set above, he found an opportunity. If there is not much that can be done to change the reality of 58% dropout rate by end of high school, there may be an opportunity to increase the chance of lifetime success for the drop-outs (as well as the graduating students) by teaching entrepreneurship skills in high school.

While Technology and Livelihood Education (TLE) subjects like Home Economics, Industrial Arts, Agri-forestry and ICT are taught in high school, they have been taught as employment skills.

By tweaking the focus of the curriculum and embedding entrepreneurship courses into each of the four TLE courses in high school, a student can have the skills to start a home business even if he is not able to finish high school. While the TLE component teaches the science and the art, the entrepreneurship part imparts business skills including in the areas of productivity, innovation and creativity.

More context. The Philippines can be described as a bypassed economy. While the Philippines was ahead of its neighbors in the 1950s, it lost a few decades thereafter and failed to build the underlying economic structure for sustained growth.

As I have described elsewhere in terms of Japanese inspired comparative advantage, A. Kawamatsu’s Flying Geese formation, our lost decades from the 1970 – 1980 coincided with the stage when trade-oriented investment decisions would have transferred manufacturing operations to lower labor cost countries like the Philippines.

Instead, the Philippines was bypassed in favor of other Asian countries. Instead, we embarked on a temporary strategy OFW strategy of exporting labor instead of building value-adding capability locally.

Without sterilizing inward remittances from the 1970s, say by building a pension or provident fund like Singapore’s as forced savings for fixed investment, local labor attained very high opportunity cost not relying on domestic productivity for its value.

Furthermore, we created a consumption-led economy with vested interest in the retail trade and real estate for continuation of policy.

This resulted into a hollowed-out industry that is not supportive of sustainable growth.

Outlook and future possibilities. We need to rebuild this capability for sustainable growth and to crate local-value added (and not just by labor arbitrage but via process capabilities) for sustainable growth and development.

This is the context where training and creating an army of entrepreneurs on the substrate of winners in the present economy may rescue the country from its inability to take off.

Building on the new economy. Unlike industry-based development of the previous eras, say iron and steel industries that are today already dominated by the NIEs and China, that are also characterized by diminishing returns, the new economy that is based on information and network economics has the benefit of increasing returns.

As I have written elsewhere in SYNTHESiST, knowledge is the new fountain of wealth, the more so because embedding knowledge like entrepreneurship skills, enables value-creation like new ventures.

In this sense, successful entrepreneurship in knowledge-based post-industries creates value and the more innovative, the more value is created.

In traditional development economics, entrepreneurs like innovators are externalities. The worth of a stevedores work is equal to that of the foreman and the entrepreneur. The math can only accept equality in prosperity (or the lack of it because the implied approach of redistribution offers no incentive for innovation or risk).

Fortunately, the Philippines never got to that stage. And Jay Bernardo’s insight, with a lot of innovation, can contribute a great deal to development based on IT-enabled learning approach.

Prof. Jay Bernardo, at right, talking to SYNTHESiST

Who is Jay Bernardo?Francisco “Jay” Bernardo III is an Industrial Management Engineer and an MBM . He has won numerous awards in entrepreneurship and education:

• Outstanding Leadership in the Field of Business Creativity and Entrepreneurship by the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education in 2005;
• Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World (TOYP) by Jaycees International in 2004;
• Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines (TOYM) in the Field of Entrepreneurship by the Philippine Jaycees in 2003; and
• 2002 Agora Award for Outstanding Achievement in Entrepreneurship by the Philippine Marketing Association in 2002.

I first met Jay Bernardo when we were involved together in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG – J&J) distributors. Subsequently, we taught together courses in New Product Development and at the Asian Center for Entrepreneurship at the Asian Institute of Management, where I am an adjunct faculty.

Jay Bernardo remains a serial entrepreneur and teacher to this day.

E-Learning Portal: IT-enabled training as emerging market innovation to create an army of entrepreneurs. The innovation that supports the insight of teaching entrepreneurship in public high schools comes in the form of an e-learning portal.

At least 60,000 teachers, most of whom may not have experience in entrepreneurship, need to be trained to embed entrepreneurship into the four TLE courses. Content is already being developed for the courses. Discussions are in on-going for the e-learning portal design.

From the initial discussions, the e-learning portal will allow a cost effective teacher training. In the future, it can also allow course management itself.

I have sat in on the model presentation and the design and technology of the e-learning portal present a really exciting approach.

With good project management, the whole opportunity can work.

An army of entrepreneurs as development locomotive. However it works, the insight of an army of entrepreneurs as development locomotive for the Philippines is an approach that can create increasing returns for the country.

Ideally, what we need for the country o break through and take-off from the rut it is currently in.