What? No Filipinos?!
Businessweek relasead an article about Asia’s Best Entrepreneurs under 25.
From the article, a good number of the young guns are building empires using Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Notable services provided by these entrepreneurs range from web and mobile application development to IT consultancy.
There are 21 professionals listed in the article and none of them are from the Philippines. Eh? I’m not surprised that there were no Filipinos on the list.
- Copycats. An unprotected product or service is easy prey for dopplegangers. Unless you can protect your business idea with proper brand management and a huge barriers to entry (cost or legal), most ingenious ideas are bound to get oversaturated in the Philippine market Quickly.
- The Philippine economy is not very friendly for start-up businesses. Rents, Utilities and Operating Costs keep going up every year. The laws which protect SMEs have yet to be made easily accessible to everyone.
- Our Educational System is geared toward producing employees, not employers. There aren’t enough classes that talk about Practical Risk Management or Innovative Product Design within the standard course curricula - or courses that can bring out the entrepreneur in everyone.
- Nepotism keeps wealth within reach of the founding families, but stifles far-reaching benefits for everyone.
- Politics. Trapo. Enough Said.
However, I believe that the opportunities are out there just waiting to be taken advantage of. As much as limiting as the local setting is for doing business, remember that we are now part of the Global economy. We shouldn’t just look for opportunities to do business in the Philippines, but abroad also as well. Unless the product you’re marketing in the Philippines is dirt-cheaper than the ones being imported from China, one is better off looking for international customers.
Change dictates that the Competition for Customers is now global.
Now, let us do something good today that can be talked about for years and decades to come.