Philips wants bright ideas for Typhoon Yolanda victims

MANILA, Philippines - Just last Sept. 4, members of the Tacloban City government, business community, and the academe jointly heard a report from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Philippines, led by its CEO and vice chairman, Jose Maria Lorenzo “Lory” Tan.

“We made it very clear to them how their airport… seaport (were) highly vulnerable — how the layout of the city ignored clear threats, and how the expansion of real estate subdivisions into low-lying areas were a very, very unwise decision,” says Tan. “They thought it would take 20 years before they would get hit; unfortunately it took two months.”

Following the highly publicized and thorough devastation of Eastern Visayas, the private sector has laudably scrambled to fill in the glaring gaps and inadequacies of the local and national governments. Engineering and electronics giant Philips pitches in with a call for imaginative thinkers to send in their ideas to resuscitate the afflicted areas. Piggybacking on its existing “Meaningful Innovation” program launched in Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore, the company, relates corporate and internal communications manager Gela Isidro, “is repositioning or redirecting (the) campaign to benefit those affected by Yolanda.”

Philips wants to crowdsource innovative ideas — which may be submitted through meaningfulinnovation.asia/Philippines.com — to be evaluated and shortlisted into six finalists, then a final winning entry that will be executed and applied. The entries will be screened or “curated” by a group of local and global Philips executives, together with partners in government and the private sector. Netizens will then be invited to vote for their favorite.

In response to a question from NetWorks, Philips country manager Fabia Tetteroo-Bueno refuses to commit a figure to the endeavor, saying, “I don’t want to put a ballpark figure out because I don’t want to limit people’s thinking.” However, she did reveal that the company is open to funding more than just the chosen entry if budgets permit. The Philips executive shares that the winning ideas in the previously mentioned countries ranged in concerns from breast cancer awareness to public safety and nutrition.

Meanwhile, Tan distills the need of the stricken areas into three: infrastructure innovations, food and food preparation, and healthcare.

For the local application of “Meaningful Innovation,” Philips partners with the Department of Health, WWF-Philippines, and the ICanServe Foundation. It also enlists the help of social media partners such as celebrities Kim Atienza and Kelly Misa, plus the SoMoms (Social Media Moms).

The company is open to other partners or influencers to help generate further traction.

Isidro says this campaign is also in keeping with the corporate goal of improving the lives of three billion people a year by 2025. According to its regional office, she continues, Philips is now positively touching the lives of 1.7 billion people a year.

She stresses that the ideas to be pitched by the public should be workable and immediately applicable and replicable across the affected areas.

For WWF’s Tan, the message of Yolanda rings loudly. “Clearly, we are not building houses the right way. Clearly, we are not laying out cities the right way. Clearly our seaports are not ready.” He adds that even the more developed Cebu City, whose seaport and airport have been “a center for response for planes and ships,” was stretched to its limit as far logistics systems went, according to private-sector comments.

The ravaged swaths of Eastern Visayas are thus a unique opportunity to reimagine livable cities of tomorrow — communities that will be ready for what Tan calls a “climate-defined future.”

In the final analysis, that’s what settlements and metropolises need before climate change flexes its muscles once more and strikes us to the ground. Tan ominously says: “Yes, it will get worse before it gets better.”

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The deadline for submission of entries to “Meaningful Innovation” is Dec. 20.