Entrepreneur's Pains

The "Great Disconnect". That is how I describe the relationship between technology entrepreneurs like us and the capital market. Entrepreneurs engaged in value creations are left to sweating in the sun compared to those businessmen involved in quick profit and instant wealth (but less value according to me) enterprises such as real estate and construction, trading and gaming, etc.

The technology entrepreneurs are at the bottom of the pecking order and frowned upon their visionary business ideas. Inspite of that fact, those entrepreneurs continuously maintain their businesses even if lead to postponing the roll-out of their innovative business creations.

Cultural Bias

Because of the cultural bias against the risky business proposals of technology entrepereneurs, most of them tap the capital market in USA. And they made good. What is left is for the Philippines is the backdoor business process components, giving away the intellectual property creations of brilliant Filipinos to foreign countries. One example is the Filipino initiated Gluecode which was developed in the Philippines, funded and IPed in US and later sold to IBM .

Silicon Valley

But it is not so in so far as Silicon Valley is concerned. The Silicon Valley's business model is to develop and nurture technology startups. Still in its pioneering stage in the Philippines, Dennis Posadas, Filipino wrote a book about it.

Enter "Rice and Chips".

The book explains how Asian countries are using the Silicon Valley model to develop technology startups. Dennis enumerates the unwritten rules of innovation that have worked in Silicon Valley since the 1930s based on the works of scholars and other seminal works on technology entrepreneurship. Using these concepts as a benchmark. Dennis points out similarities and differences between Silicon Valley and Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, Singapore and Korea. He discusses concepts like proximity, Schumpeter's creative destruction, intellectual property, the importance of universities, publications and patents, and the role of stock markets in encouraging venture capital.

Dennis, The Author

Dennis Posadas, has worked as chip equipment development engineer, technology/business analyst and venture capital scout with one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world. Dennis received his BS Electrical Engineering degree from the University of the Philippines in 1991, was a sponsored Fellow of the Advanced Study Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Advanced Educational Services. He is presently a consultant to the UP-Ayala TechnoPark Business Incubation in UP Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines.

A much sought speaker on technology entrepreneurship, Dennis' schedule is quite full sharing his insights to students, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists.

(Source : Rice and Chips : Technopreneurship and Innovation in Asia, Dennis Posadas
http://ricebowlandchips.blogspot.com)

Labels: Ayala Technopark, Dennis Posadas, entrepreneur, Innovation, rice and chips, Silicon Valley, UP Diliman

 
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Starting a business from scratch was not an easy job, really! Having been employed for almost two decades, thinking of running my own business was cool, but not it implementing it. Amidst all the internal resistance to move forward of becoming an entrepreneur, suddenly it happened - GSI was created! Creativity, an unseen force intervened.

Lacking a formal education and absence of a mentor to become an entrepreneur, I read "Entrepreneurship : A Contemporary Approach" by Donald F. Kuratko and Richard M. Hodgetts. The book was written to structure and illustrate the discipline of entrepreneurship in a manner that is unique and creative as entrepreneurship itself. In table from the book showed that in 1934, Schumpeter described an entrepreneur :"Innovation; Initiative". Then in 1978, Timmons' described them as : "drive/self confidence; goal oriented; moderate risk taker; focus of control; creativity/innovation".

The book profiles entrepreneurs as being creative and innovative. Creativity was thought to be as an exclusively inherited trait. However an expanding school of thought believes that creativity can be learned. In new ventures there often is a collective creativity that emerges from the joint efforts of the founders and team members and produces unique goods and services.

Long before entrepreneurship option was considered, I bought a book in Singapore entitled "Creative Visualization" by Shakti Gawain. It has been my textbook in learning how to visualize an image hours before a photo session and later the discipline of creative visualization was applied in conceptualizing business models for GSI.

Visualization, or creative visualization as it is sometimes referred to,
uses mental imagery to obtain an objective. The snapshot or a vivid mental picture of the desired thing is held firmly focused in the mind as if it had already happened.

The technique has been widely used in various fields such as the arts, sports, business, alternative medicine, religious practices, psychotherapy, psychical research, the mystical and occult arts, and self-improvement.

Creative visualization also is known by other terms such as "positive thinking," "positive imagery," "dynamic imaging," "creating imaging," "imaging," and so on.


The author, Shakti Gawain has been pioneering the field of personal development for over twenty-five years, she has been a best-selling author and internationally renowned teacher of consciousness. Shakti has facilitated thousands of individuals in developing greater awareness, balance and wholeness in their lives.

The book, which helped launch a movement, has been successfully used in the fields of health, education, business, sports, and creative arts for many years. Shakti explains how to use mental imagery and affirmations to produce positive changes in one’s life. The book contains meditations and exercises that are aimed at helping the reader or practitioner channel energies in good directions, strengthen self-esteem, improve overall health, and experience deep relaxation.

Creative visualization is the technique of using your imagination to create what you want in your life. There is nothing at all new, strange, or unusual about creative visualization. You are already using it every day, every minute in fact. It is your natural power of imagination, the basic creative energy of the universe, which you use constantly, whether or not you are aware of it.

In the past, many of us have used our power of creative visualization in a relatively unconscious way. Because of our own deep-seated negative concepts about life, we have automatically and unconsciously expected and imagined lack, limitation, difficulties, and problems to be our lot in life. To one degree or another that is what we have created for ourselves. And that has to change thorugh creative visualization.


Next week, our innovation team at GSI will be undergoing internal training on creative visualization to prepare them to a new business model of the company. With some advice from Dennis Posadas and insights from his book "Rice and Chips" our innovation driven team, QUbTEk Labs, will be launched today and is on the road for a journey to global technopreneurship.

Finally, Oprah Winfrey shares the positive result of visualization - “I do believe, and I have seen in my own life, that Creative Visualization works.”



(Source :http://www.shaktigawain.com/index.php)

Labels: Creativity, Dennis Posadas, entrepreneur, rice and chips, Shakti Gawain, visualization

 
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Built on rock solid business model and innovative strategies, GSI has survived several corporate crises. The first crisis sparked off from a non payment of about P4M by a partner was resolved on a day-to-day basis. That was easy, we moved on and contained the business ills.


The second one was rather too punishing caused from a very poor cash flow from government projects. That was almost a point of no return. But, GSI must not fail.

Night after night I was watching war movies to learn how platoon leaders and generals were able to turn around a defeat to a victory. One of the Vietnam War movies, "We Were Soldiers" caught my attention as it showed great leadership and precise decision making process. Based from Wikipedia -

"We Were Soldiers is a 2002 war film that dramatized the Battle of Ia Drang which took place in November 1965, the first major engagement of American troops in the Vietnam War. It was directed by Randall Wallace and stars Mel Gibson. It is based on the book ‘We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young’” by Lieutenant General (Ret) Hal Moore and reporter Joseph Galloway, who were at the battle."




DVD after DVD, I have consumed most of the most war films. What about other crisis situations than war? Then I remembered a failed lunar landing - the Apollo 13. A 1995 movie of the same title was shown but I never had a chance to watch it. I prefer to play tennis, read and play the guitar than to watch a movie.


So, I got hold of the DVD, and watched it four times, almost memorizing the sequences of events leading to a "successful failure". With insights on averting disastrous failure, I wrote the strategic framework "Apollo 13 - Turning Around GSI" in May 4, 2002.





The crisis led to a lot of confusion and dissertion that made so many information buried in mud.

As in "Houston, we've had a problem", our team accepted the fact that we are in the middle of a ferocious storm - waiting to be wiped out by the shear force of Category 5 wind. We defined the problem - financial.

Setting up the roadmap and action schedules to hit the ground, a mind set of "Failure is Not an Option" permeated the company.




We looked back and analyzed why we must NOT fail. We quantified the values GSI has generated and the goodwill it has contributed to the society .

It was interesting to note that GSI trived in crisis and chaotic business environment because it was formed in the middle of the Asian Economic Flu of 1997.

Therefore, GSI has been resilient at very start.




Next step we hurdled was to make an inventory of "What Good Things Have We Got". And we found many. Those were
good enough to set things moving and confront the crisis.


Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, months to years - grinding slowly at the start in mitigating the crisis until speed was achieved to comfortable do business with confidence.




Looking back, it was GSI's clear vision of the future as well its adherence towards honesty, integrity and hardwork that saved us from the black hole of failed business. Our clients, suppliers and partners did not turned their back on us.

As of today, GSI is still owned by us. No external fund was infused by banks, investors or financial insitutions.

Without COO/EVP Gemma Pelagio, CFO Annie Fabre, COB Hermes Dorado, Ambassador Encomienda, Engr Tato, and SBCorp "Failure is Not An Option" would have been rewinded to "Houston, We've Got a Problem".

To my fellow entrepreneurs and the SME space, I am looking forward to share with all you the details of this blog to assist you mitigate and adapt to business concerns and crisis.

Labels: Ambassador Encomienda, Annie Fabre, Apollo 13, Averting Business Crisis, Engr Tato, entrepreneur, Failure is not a option, Gemma Pelagio, Hermes Dorado, SBCorp

 
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Returning back to the Philippines from an eight-year stay at Brunei Shell Petroleum in August 1988, there was an immediate need to acclimatize myself to the new business environment and establish a network. Reading an advertisement from a local newspaper of a seminar at Meralco Foundation, I immediately visited its office to get and submit an application form.

The seminar, "Problem Analysis and Decision Making" was held on September 13 - 17, 1988 at Green Valley Country Club, Baguio City. Exposed mainly on software and hardware subjects, the training gave me a new insight in looking at new knowledge and opportunities especially in business.

On the very first day of the seminar, I was surprised that a former classmate from UP College of Engineering in Diliman, Gilbert Azagra, was one of the trainors! He put me on the spot when he introduced my name and said : "my classmate and seatmate at UP Engg whom I ask some help during exams." Gilbert, still with Meralco, took Industrial Engineering while I did Geodetic Engineering.

As the seminar materials where distributed by Gilbert, he opened up the session by sharing a quotation of Thomas Watson, Sr. - "You cannot be a success in business without believing that it is the greatest business in the world. You have to put your heart in the business and business in your heart."

Since then the quotation stayed in my heart. Ten years later, I read it again to myself, and put it into use when GeoSpatial Solutions hit the road as a start-up company.

Labels: Baguio, Brunei, CEO blog, entrepreneur, Geodetic, Geospatial, Gilbert Azagra, Industrial, Meralco, quotation, Ricalde, UP, Watson

 
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MSHS 38th Recognition Day Speech
22 March 2001
Theme : “ Manileño : Onward to a Meaningful Transformation”

Manila Science High School
Padre Faura Corner Taft Avenue



The MaSci Students : Agents of Change

Efren E.S Ricalde, '71
GeoSpatial Solutions
President/CEO


Introduction

Thirty years ago, when I was a graduating senior student, we were fans of the Beatles. We danced to the rock and roll music of the fabled ‘70s. Taft Avenue was dotted with trees; we played softball, volleyball and the banduria. Coke was 15 centavos and Sarsi, 10 centavos. Needing a new attire for the graduation, I sold my book “College Physics” by Weber, Maning and White at Recto to buy a Hickok belt. Being one of the poor students, my parents can not afford to buy a new one.

Since freshman, I was Einstein’s avid follower. What coincidence that at my senior year, I belonged to IV-Einstein, the honor section. I bought books on relativity and attended Professor Joe Valenzuela’s lectures at UP Diliman. One limerick I recalled was about time dilation in a relativistic travel :

“There was a lady named Bright who traveled much faster that light. One day she left out of sight and came back the previous night”.

Reading mostly Einstein’s contribution to science, I didn’t realize Einstein’s profound influence not only to theoretical physics but more important to our day-to-day experience as science students and alumni when I read the following quotations:

“Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love”:
“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.”

And there is humor in his definition of relativity:

“A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems shorter than a minute. But tell that same man to sit on a hot stove for a minute, it is longer than any hour. That’s relativity.”

Finally, Einstein couched us :

“Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and the profit of the community to which you later work belongs.”

Enough with Einstein, allow we then to share with you my experience in relation to our theme tonight “Manileño: Onward to a Meaningful Transformation”. On which I would like to suggest a sub-theme “MaSci Students – Agents of Change”.


Transformation to the New Economy

The wind of change is howling vigorously. The ubiquitous Web and Internet technologies tremendously transformed the way we do our daily activities, school works and businesses too. Indeed, this change created a paradigm shift – the transformation from the Old Economy characterized by industrialization to the New Economy of knowledge based industries.

Those who resisted by ignoring the pervasiveness of the Web and customer empowered Internet systems were “amazooned” and doomed to fail. In this paradigm shift, the science and technology entrepreneurs played a major role in the creation of an enterprise, and emerged winners.

Who are the winners? “The battle for supremacy in personal computers is over, and few will survive,” published in BusinessWeek in 1983. “The winner is IBM”. Computer guru Esther Dyson advised entrepreneurs of small computer companies to go instead to the restaurant business. However, a young Texan, named Michael Dell, a college student at the University of Texas in Austin, didn’t know enough to be frightened off. With his $1000 savings, he started selling computers out of his college dorm at the age of 18.

Ten years later, in 1993, IBM lost $4.97 billion, the biggest loss in American corporate history. Job eliminations rose to 100,000 in December 1993.

Who were the wild dogs that brought down the poor, old, arthritic, and misshapen IBM? Dell Computer for one. Dell has learned how to talk to its customers, while IBM talked to itself. With July 2000 revenue of $15B, Dell is still leading the pack.


What did we learn as a MaSci student?

Albert Einstein, Time Magazine Man of the Century said, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”.

As MaSci students, that is exactly what we learned – being keen in identifying opportunities in our classrooms, homes and communities. Without us knowing it, we all developed the sense of science and technology entrepreneurship. We have sharpened our saws to have competitive advantage from among the high school students being recognized in the Philippines for the year 2001.

So, you are the science and technology entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is best described by Kent, Sexton and Vesper in the Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurship:

They said that “Humanity’s progress from caves to campuses has been explained in numerous ways. But central to virtually to all of these theories has been the role of the ‘agent of change’ the force that initiates and implements material progress. Today, we recognize that the agent of change in human history has been and most likely will continue to be entrepreneur.”


What is our success cookbook?

As science and technology entrepreneurs and agents of change, what is our success cookbook? Oliver Clayton, in his book “Planning a Career as a Business Owner”, wrote that an entrepreneur should be aggressive, competitive, goal-oriented, confident, decisive, an achiever very early in life, a loner in your final decision, persistent, an optimist (to an extreme), hyperactive mentally, a dreamer, a calculated risk-taker, a perfectionist and intuitive.


And where do we go from here?

We have the best domain knowledge derived at MaSci. So are our academic values and competitive culture. We are ready to go.

But how we do sustain the goals, dreams and aspirations in a transformed environment? What barriers shall we construct to arrest the marauding forces of fierce competition and globalization? What walls do we build to protect us from exploitation, environmental degradation, commercialization and social decadence?

There is no better effort than reinventing our mind set :

Being a leader is one. “Leadership is the ability to get other people to do what they want to do, and like it.” said Harry Truman. In the New Economy the first comer succeeds. They eventually became leaders. These leaders are trustworthy, honest and competent.

Being a creative student is another. Julia Cameron said “Leap and the net will appear”. As students and science and technology entrepreneurs, we must now see beyond the walls of our building. I challenge all you to make a big stride and leap to your dreams. That’s creativity.

Being a believer of the Divine Creator is paramount. With God, everything is possible.


Finally, we will always win

And that is because of the MaSci students’ passion to create and innovate. Beyond our academic undertakings and successes are us – The Science and Technology Entrepreneurs. We may start small but dream big. According to Demosthenes, “we see small opportunities that are often the beginning of great enterprise.”

To our beloved teachers, school administrators and staff who crafted this sea of brilliant MaSci graduates, we thank you all for giving me the opportunity to share with that wonderful experience of being a proud MaSci alumni.

With all due respect, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my teacher Mrs. Concepcion for believing in my dreams.

Mabuhay Kayong Lahat!

Thank you.

Labels: businessweek, CEO blog, change, diliman, economy, einstein, entrepreneur, Manila Science, MaSci, MSHS, relativity, Ricalde, Taft, UP, valenzuela

 
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