Social Innovation and Infrastructure in an Emerging Market 174.0

Fiesta and infra are muscle and bone of the Philippine body politic
On the way back from a conference in Tagaytay on Thursday, I took a wrong turn and luckily ended up at the fiesta celebration and Karakol procession at Paligawan, Silang in Cavite.

Fiesta. Critics have charged fiestas as wasteful. Yet, as with Ben Okri’s comment in my Avatar post, fiestas also serve as institutions, in fact, an important part of the muscle that binds the body politic of the nation together and makes community action easier.

(Update on March 23, 2010: You may click on emerging markets innovationat the navigation line above for a summary of my views.)

Infrastructure. Driving back to Tagaytay the following day, I noted the bones that support the body politic.
What is becoming a spaghetti of overhead roads in Villamor, reminded me of a similar spaghetti in Los Angeles, trying to capture and serve the complicated comings and goings of massively mobile humanity.

We do enjoy our fiestas and the government has been active in infrastructure mainly because we are so much behind, that they are good vehicles for the stimulus package, and they have massive project costs so indicative of the how the government benefits the people.

(Note: The value of government services is accounted based on spending even if, as Jun Lozada says, not more than 80% goes applied. That is how economists say it ought to be done.)

Building muscle and bone together builds capacity for the country to move forward.

Paligawan. From what some bystanders told me, the Karakol is dedicated to improving the pastol. That would not be surprising as many feasts, even those in the Christian calendar are celebrated to improve fertility in harvests or with farm animals.

The name, Paligawan, itself implies courtship. I would not be surprised if the feast itself ante-dates Legazpi. Silang was the biggest community in the area and used to be include Tagaytay, Santa Rosa and Carmona inside its boundaries.

I am not surprised to see the whole family bring out the children to watched the parade to be blessed by the fiesta’s patron. For Paligawan, the children especially who are brought out seem the final beneficiaries of the celebration and of our progress.

Institutions. They do not just include organizations or buildings as is the layman’s understanding. For sociologists, they include traditional practices like fiestas and even 5/6, the microlending practice that allow clean credit and enforces collections by social pressure among others.

The celebrations, especially, are important as shared experiences to bind communities in socialization process into communities.

My own take is that we need to strengthen institutions, as practices, that are more adapted to our level of development as an emerging market and post-industrial society.

Punctuality as Institution. These institutions should include punctuality, or broader still, the awareness of time and keeping to commitments like schedules and deliveries.

European Punctuality. In Europe, the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the resultant urbanization necessitated the creation of punctuality as a developed country institution.

The creation of such networks as railroads one and a half century ago led to massive efforts to coordinate time across countries. Even now you can set you watch by the arrival of trains in Europe; so dependable as many other life schedules depend on it.

Note: In a biography, Albert Einstein’s discovery of E=MC² and the Theory of Relativity came from his earlier work in the area of coordinating timekeeping between Bern and other terminus of the European railroads networks.

Institutions from Trust: The Social Contract and Agreeing to Disagree. As I mentioned in the last post, the ability to create mutual trust in society is one screen I have set for my Presidential candidate.

Trust is a context requirement for a nation to innovation and progress. Trust is a requirement for a new social contract that must be forged among all sectors of Philippine society to share the created wealth equitably. It is a requirement for one morality and rule of law for all Filipinos and not the medieval one that still has vestiges in popular culture and often in the law – a morality for the rich and another for the greater mass.

When we have high trust, agreeing to disagree in negotiating ideas, a necessity for a government system designed as checks-and-balance, becomes the basis for progress, also.

(Note: Thanks to Dean Nemenzo for a master class in our reading club on the Prince and 16th century Italy. To me, that seems where we are still struck as a country hence slow progress.)

Infrastructure:  The SLEX and Skyway. We have the technical capability to build infrastructure from engineering to construction. This massive effort in collaborative design as well as in coordinated construction speaks well of our abilities to move forward inexorably.

W Brian Arthur’s Purposed System as Organisms of Bone and Muscle. In our post, W Brian Arthur defines purposed systems as other vehicles of innovations. They may be technology-enabled (i.e. using transformed natural phenomena) but they also have vigorous social components. In emerging markets like the Philippines, innovation in purposed systems are currently driving social change.

Automated elections. Another major effort is the conduct of automated elections that I am observing and helping on with avid fascination more so because the effort is in the public sphere and in the messy field of innovation by the nation a democracy.

CSO. My own sense is that only good can come of this for the country. Civil society organizations like PPCR-V, Namfrel, and Libertas are flexing their muscles.

BlogWatch's Jane and Dine in action at IFES Conference. With PCIJ, only new media at site.

New media. Internet-based media is emerging in the likes of BlogWatch, a blog-based e- magazine by Noemi Dado, Rochelle Chua, Dine Racoma, Jane Uymatiao, and others in the team sponsored by POC of the Vibal group are actively emerging in the election a active media forces.  I sense they will have a power of their own like the Huffington Post in the USA.

International NGO. Much support from the international community of NGOs and funders like USAID. IFES, NDI and Carter Center to name a few.

I support steadfast leaders like Chairman Jose Melo of the Comelec who push projects through despite the odds and the brickbats that come their way. I agree with him that projects of this type as with BIR and Customs automation projects, in the Philippine context, will not happen if done in small incremental steps.  They must be done in bold moves and leaders like him ought to be supported. In historical time, once an automated system is in place, we can improve and simplify.

The existing culture of election cheating generates so must mistrust that only strong leadership can implement the innovative changes like automation to break the vicious cycle and hopefully turn it into a virtuous one. Likewise, there are many vested interest who may not be cheats who also fight the change process for their own economically rations reasons.

(Note: I note that their are no personal criticisms that go Chairman Melo’s way though the Comelec is a favorite punching bag of many. This particular set of officers, in general at least, seem a better bunch than many previous ones.)

Other Infrastructures and Purposed Systems. New airport terminals in the Visayas and the Laguindingan airport, the SCTEX and the three strong inter-modal highways in the Visayas, the private-sector led BPO campuses and mobile phone enabled  banking, microfinance and microinsurance purposed systems, university and healthcare networks – these are all new things that are quietly moving the country towards the US$5,000 GDP per capita (PPP), a critical tipping point to progress.

Social Innovation a Must. All the innovations and purposed systems above are at the diffusion end of the S-curve and will be a great benefit to the country.  Later on, what they now enable now, will allow us to move backward into the future of science reseearch.  Let us allow them to unleash our talents, energies and resources to this future goal.