Sojourns & Perspectives: April 2010

Respond to Change

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Good morning. First of all I would like to extend my gratitude to this hallowed institution and the noble professors who have made this place an important part of every alumnus from UP (Los Banos), including me.

I distinctly remember when I first got a mail from the Economics Department Chair, Ms. Amai Bello about having to speak to you for this occasion. I was traveling and I was checking out mails at midnight and I was quite taken aback by her invitation.

First, I am neither an economist nor an academician, who I believe are the better professionals produced by our university. Second, I am no billionaire. I am neither a Manny Pangilinan nor a John Gokongwei,Jr. who has an empire to show or an inspiring entrepreneurial story to inspire you.

But she said I am fine. She wants someone who can inspire you to think out of the box. Well, I said to myself that’s my job in my profession. I make CXOs of companies think out of the box and provide ideas on how to make more money for their companies.

When I started thinking of what to say to you today a week back, I had quite a challenge. I am neither young nor old, and I cannot tell you what to do with your life as you are adults already. In fact, you may already have an idea of what you want to be.

So I said to myself, let me just tell you about the world I have seen, and tell you what is out there and what could be in store for you.

Charles Darwin once said that, it is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.

Similarly, when you leave UP, the world out there will be a place of survival from the constant change that will happen. Scholastic records are good but they will not be sufficient for you get ahead. You need to be aware and responsive to the changes around you.

How many of you have used Google or Skype? I am sure almost all of you. But how many of us have known about them in 1999.

Let us a have local example. How many of us have known LBC from our childhood? Then, we know LBC to be a courier, symbolized by the man in the motorcycle who picks up and delivers packages door to door.

A decade past, LBC has become a remittance center, no longer transporting just packages for people but also monies from across the world. A more recent past, LBC is now a bank.

You can have many examples around you. Take for example San Miguel, you may know that it has a property arm, a packaging and food manufacturing business, aside from being the manufacturer of the famous San Miguel Beer, you all mostly have had a taste of in your 4 years in this University. But did you also know that San Miguel has also become a telecom operator in the last 2 years? You may have heard about Wi-Tribe Philippines or Liberty Telecoms?

The one thing that will be constant around you is change. Change is not just in a few industries, it’s across all walks of life.

It is in media. Before, we read newspapers and magazines, now we have the ubiquitous web for everything that we want to have access on. There are podcasts, vodcasts. There is Facebook and its 400 million members we can get updates from. Live. There are 62 million blogs apart from the numerous news agencies online of the likes of CNN, BBC, or even our own ones like GMA, ABS-CBN, or Philippine Daily Inquirer.

It is in Music. Most of you may have heard about cassette tapes, or even long playing vinyl records. But I am sure that most of you if not all does not own one. Most of the formats and even gadgets in which the music or movies you listen to and watch today were unheard of 10 years ago.

It is in travel. Even in the Philippines, travel has evolved so much from airlines to railways. For air travel, the transformation has not only been limited to infrastructure, new business models have also evolved. You may have heard about buzz word promotions like 'Fly Budget, No Frills Fly. Two to Go. Zero Fares, etc.'

In Banking, amazing business models have evolved in the last 5 years and the purpose and nature of transactions have dramatically extended beyond the traditional banking transactions that we know. A small business from Vietnam or Philippines can now get a micro loan from Kiva by connecting with Kiva lenders from the US or UK. Kiva volunteers facilitate the transactions online and ensure that the transaction is legitimate.

Prosper (www.prosper.com) is a peer-to-peer lending operation in US connecting willing lenders with eager borrowers. Participants are individuals who mutually agree on an amount to lend and borrow, respectively, including the rates at which the borrower is willing to pay as interest.

According to former US Education Secretary Richard Riley, '…the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.' Believe me in my time, when I left UP in the early 1990s, internet was just starting in the US. Neither any job nor any business model that you know now that is tied to the online world was in existence.

'We are currently preparing for jobs that don’t yet exist…' When I finished my MBA in 2004, jobs like Search Engine Optimization Expert or User Experience Specialist were unheard of. Even the concepts these job titles stand for have not been articulated yet.

'…using technologies that haven’t been invented.'

When have you heard about open source technologies or what you call Web 2.0? Most of the new technologies today are a product of collaborative ingenuity of individuals and communities (not just companies) who decided to participate in the innovation of technologies using free and open source tools now found everywhere.

'…in order to solve problems that we don’t even know are problems yet.'

Think about the green solutions that you see around you advertised in construction designs, in urban planning, even in the way Google has stored their servers several thousand feet below sea level to minimize emission of harmful gases. The problems they are trying to solve are things we don’t even know exist, much less consider as a problem.

Times are changing and fast. The explosion of information, of the digital world, and the technologies that pervade our lives, virtual or real continues every day.

We live in exponential times. Did you know that there are about 76 billion searches performed in Google monthly? Where do you think these questions were addressed to before? 1 week of information from the Philippine Star is greater than the entire history of information from the 19th century.

Let me give you a context.

'...3rd generation of fiber optics today have the capacity to carry 10 trillion bits per second in a single strand of fiber. In other metrics, such is the equivalent of 1,900 CDs worth of data or 150 million phone calls per second.'

Imagine the capacity for data.

There is an explosion in the digital world.
In Facebook, there are 400 million members, 100 million of whom access the community from their mobile devices. These members post 60 million updates daily and upload 5 billion items of content weekly. If it was a country it will be more than 4 times the size of our population and the 3rd largest country next to China and Ind
Laptops continue to sell briskly around the world clearly denoting the increasing need for accessing information on the go.

And there is much more. 'The 100$ laptop project expects to distribute from 50 to 100M of laptops a year to children in underdeveloped countries.'

Eventually, we will see a virtual world available to everyone, young and old, from developed to emerging economies, from rich to poor countries.

Consider this, young graduates. You are at the forefront of the changes around you, and with the unprecedented explosion of information and technology, the world is literally at your fingertips.

New companies today are being created by Filipinos who dared to dream. There are plenty of examples, and I can only show a few stellar names of Filipinos who dared to respond to change.

Like the visionaries ahead of them who actually made the change. You know their faces. Henry Sy, Lucio Tan, Jaime Zobel de Ayala, and John Gokongwei.

Testimony to their vision are the Filipino brands now known around the globe, and you might not know it, these are brands making inroads in markets across Asia Pacific, the Middle East and even the US and European markets.

Did you know that our economy is driven by entrepreneurs, especially small and medium businesses that employ 55% of our labor force?

We have a large and teeming consumer market. Did you know that 70% of our economy is created through consumption? In Metro Manila, there are 40 shopping malls and in every major city we have a mall to boast of.

How are we sustaining it? We have 17.1B of US dollars that gets pumped in the economy by our beloved OFWs annually.

All these positive changes are happening around you and across the world. The country is growing, expanding and changing. Our country has strong fundamentals to support a generation of graduates like you who want to ride the changing times.

The question for you is - Are you ready to respond to change?

1.Our economy is growing.
2.Literacy rates among Filipinos continue to be among the highest across developing countries.
3.We have a sizable middle class and it will only continue to grow in size.
4.A knowledge-based economy is emerging and quite healthily driving up other areas such as construction, as demand for office space increases.

Your future is in your hands. You know more about the world now than all the past generations combined. All you need to do is to start thinking... of what you want to be.

Create a personal vision for yourself. Imagine what you want to be in these changing times.

See and capture the opportunity. Be aware, take part.
Create a willingness to learn & develop. Your education does not stop here; in fact the real education for you is just beginning.

Learn to love ambiguity. What you ought to be is something you need to visualize, but embrace the possibilities no matter how ambiguous these may seem at the moment.

Focus on what you can do ……. and not what you can’t do. And most importantly, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP. UPLB alumni have never been quitters, much less Alumni from CEM, don’t be the first one.

Let me finally inspire you with a quote from John Gokongwei, Jr., who truly has a story to inspire you with.

"...As a boy, I sold peanuts from my backyard. Today, I sell snacks to the world. I want to see other Filipinos do the same... " - An excerpt from John Gokongwei, Jr.'s speech at the Ad Congress in November 2007.