By Dennis Posadas
Contributor

THE scenario is all too familiar. A young Filipino, after having completed his masters or PhD in engineering or the sciences, decides to leave for abroad to seek greener pastures. Or even, a returnee Filipino with an advanced degree from abroad, returning with hope in his eyes, only to leave again, disillusioned by what he can work on and what he will earn.

Or even the fact that many of our small- and medium-sized Philippine companies cannot afford to do R&D to improve their products to make them world class. But if they had a world-class R&D Institute that can help them, but for a fraction of the cost, wouldn’t that be great?

One of the Congressional Commission on Science & Technology and Engineering (COMSTE)’s main recommendations is to setup a local version of Taiwan’s R&D jewel, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).

In the 70’s, when the GDP of Taiwan was still based on agriculture and low cost manufacturing, their leaders decided that they wanted to copy Silicon Valley. To do this, they setup the ITRI, in the city of Hsinchu. The ITRI ever since has become Taiwan’s top source of innovation and technology spin offs.

Every day, many patents are made at ITRI, and a lot of Taiwanese companies do business with it. In fact ITRI has spun off many tech companies like the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) as well as others. In fact, even musical instrument and bicycle companies in Taiwan work with ITRI to improve their products through R&D.

ITRI is in the business of innovation.

The main difference between ITRI and the R&D institutes we have now, that are either government owned (like DoST’s ASTI) and those in the private sector (like what some companies have), is that ITRI is a semi-government, semi-private entity. In other words, it is a public-private partnership.

Have you ever noticed any of our technologies developed locally that have been commercialized, particularly from government laboratories? Very few. This is because government is not really setup to commercialize things, although hopefully with the passage of the Technology Transfer Act (patterned after the US Bayh-Dole Act) that will change.

But still, one of the things we do not really see much of locally is what we call academe-industry interaction at the highest level. By that I mean that although we do see activities like cadet engineering internships, we do not see the type of research where a company outsources its research to an outside R&D entity. There are, but not a lot.

So how does this involve the poor scientist and how does this hopefully convince him to stay here? By offering the young scientists a venue to work on real problems with industry.

The ITRI Philippines will be a shared venue for Philippine companies that do not have money to do R&D. But if they share the expenses of running ITRI, we will have a place where young brilliant Filipino scientists can work on problems that will be used by our local companies, and potentially create opportunities for technology startups to sprout.

ITRI Philippines should ideally be run like a private venture, but with a government stake. It should try to go after R&D contracts with Philippine companies. By being competitive, by operating in this manner, the researchers can share in the fruits of the success of this institute.

The details of ITRI Philippines are still being worked out. But if you are interested in giving inputs, feel free to checkout the COMSTE website at http://www.comste.gov.ph.

Dennis Posadas is the Deputy Executive Director of the Philippine Congressional Commission on Science & Technology and Engineering. His new book Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable, will be published by Pearson Education Asia this Summer 2009.