How to foster innovation in the Philippines?
As I mentioned, you can have the academe, the industry and government generating innovation.
There is a model called the triple helix model of innovation developed in the 1990s.
And it tells us how these actors of academe, industry and government interact with each other.
And in this model, any actor can start the development of innovation.
So for example, the government can create policies that support innovation, collaboration between academe and industry or provide incentives to industry to collaborate with the academe.
So in this process, the industry would consult with academe to help them with the R&D of certain products.
And you can also start with the industry, you can also start with the academe.
So there is no prescribed initiator in this triple helix model. So anybody can interact with each other or with another actor.
And actually there are a lot of models right now. You have the quadruple, quintuple helix model for innovation, but a lot of researchers say that you go back to the basics to fully understand the interactions of these actors.
How is the Triple Helix Model applied in the Philippines?
The application of the triple helix model in the Philippines or in any other country is what we call the regional innovation ecosystem.
And we expand this from the three actors of academe, industry, and government.
Now you have incubators and accelerators and startups. The buzzword here are startups. So, incubators and accelerators are both helping startups.
Startups are companies that generate innovation and make it into a product, a process, and service that can be taken up by the market.
Incubators and accelerators, on the other hand, they get these newly founded startups and help them in terms of mentoring, infrastructure, where they can develop the company more, and get network for either investors or customers.
Another part of this regional innovation ecosystem are the investors, in terms of the venture capitalists and angel investors.
Applying this triple helix model in the Philippines requires loss that can support it.
We have now the Philippine Innovation Act, or RA 11293, which set up the National Innovation Council that is composed of the different departments of the government and experts from the academe and industry.
And they are trying to strategize how to support innovation generation in the country by removing bureaucratic hurdles on that.
And we also have another law, which is the Innovative Startup Act or RA 11337.
And this gives a lot of incentives and support to startups with three national government agencies, which is the DTI, DOST, and DICT.
