Nurturing entrepreneurship promotes economic growth

CEBU, Philippines - Major successful Filipino technopreneurs noted that ambition and focus, blended with the right product, innovation and execution plan, are one of the key drivers towards a business success.

Founder of Developers Connect Philippines Winston Damarillo said that increasing the scale of entrepreneurship enables the promotion of the economic growth in the country.

Being one of the speakers of the Entrepreneurship Camp held at Casino Español, Cebu City, Damarillo, who also sits as the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Morphlabs, noted that Cebuanos are the type of individuals who have organized and entrepreneurial minds, thus forecasting a huge potential of progress in the Queen City of the South.

However, he added that it is important for a certain individual to have an ambition to move up with something he believes in.

He then recommended the present generation to develop technologies to help solve immediate problems in rice and agricultural production, farm industry, information and technology and business process outsourcing.

“We should focus on what Cebu has. People are more enterprising. We have it here in Cebu and we just have to add a few more ambition”, said Winston Damarillo.

With a structured mechanism such as incubators is needed to grow and shape more entrepreneurs, he added that an attractive investment from foreign people who have huge advocacies in Cebu will invite more money and revenue.

Considering entrepreneurship as the most important input in economic development, he said that Cebu is good central point for product-type start-ups.

Anticipating another forum in Cebu around August, the Entrepreneurship Camp is the first in the country to provide an avenue for mentoring and training from top technopreneurs in the country. 

Meanwhile, Tallwood Venture Capital managing partner Diosdado Banatao recommended the promotion of an ecosystem allocating resource and time for venture capitalists and tech start-ups all over the country.

Acknowledging the need for more experts, he said that the unique solutions and difficult-to-do technologies create test a value to access the global market and further develop the economic situation.

He also noted that those who invest in a lot of risk but greater return are more successful than those who prefer quick returns but lesser risk.

Sharing five success factors in start-ups, Banatao said that one must know and understand what the market needs before coming up with an execution plan and the money to invest.

“If you have the first three, you have higher probability to have money. If you have only one among the three, you will have a tougher time. It’s actually easier to develop a product based on an existing market,” he said during his presentation.

Recognizing a list of inventions and fewer innovations, he then encouraged start-ups to venture more in innovation since it provides more opportunities in the market.

Separating invention from innovation, he further described the latter as a viable mixture of technologies blended together to create a right product in accordance to the compelling need of a certain market.

However, he reminded budding entrepreneurs with the value of intellectual property rights and violation of such ends one’s journey to success.

“In technology markets, innovation stays. Develop more different ways to solve a problem, look at what you have and determine how you would sell that capability. As long as there is an existing technology and you’re able to license it, you have to get it done,” he added.

He also said that a business requires a team of field experts who will execute the plan and a marketing person who knows the quality of product planning and understanding.  

“You may be the strongest engineer but not a marketing person. There is no substitute for someone understanding the market. A lot of engineers forget that,” he said.

Regarded as a Silicon Valley visionary, Banatao is the chair of the Philippine Development Foundation and is considered to be the most successful Filipino technopreneur whose innovations make up 30% of every computer in the world today and currently supporting the work of 22 small but promising startups. (FREEMAN)