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Award-winning course in the Philippines aims to boost innovation and technopreneurship

Award-winning course in the Philippines aims to boost innovation and technopreneurship

According to an announcement
by the University of the Philippines (UP),
an advanced course with a different flavour is available at the College of
Engineering in UP Diliman. The course is
being described as a fusion of different fields; a mix of technology and
innovation, a crash course in marketing and business, and part personality and
motivational workshop.

What sets it
apart from other traditional courses of producing a technology prototype or a business
plan for a thesis, is how the students are expected to hurdle a real-life
challenge in the world of industry. The students need to prove that they and
their venture have what it takes to make it in the marketplace. They are
expected to successfully sell a tech-business venture to a panel of Filipino
and foreign industry leaders, technopreneurs, and potential capital investors.

Dr Luis G.
Sison, a UP Electrical and Electronics Engineering professor and the director
of the UP Technology Transfer and Business Office, is the man behind the
course. He designed, improved, facilitated and based this course on his
MS-level course IE 298. 

The course name
may be a bit long to write on application forms and resumes but it sums up its
aim perfectly. Higher Education Institutional Readiness for Innovation and
Technopreneurship (HIRIT) will equip the students with the basic tools and
skills for identifying and pursuing market opportunities to fast-track
technology translation and startup formation, as well as paving the way for them
to network with technopreneurs, investors, and industry partners.

Initially, HIRIT
started with the Engineering Research and
Development for Technology
(ERDT), a consortium of eight universities –
namely Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU),
Central Luzon State University (CLSU),  De La Salle
University
(DLSU), Mapua Insitute of
Technology
(MIT), Mindanao State
University – Iligan Institute of Technology
(MSU-IIT), University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD), University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB),
and University of San Carlos (USC) – that
offers masters and doctoral degrees in various engineering fields.

Sison recalls
that “when the consortium was formed, there were concerns about the government
making a lot of investments in R&D, and those investments not being
translated into economic impact so they required all ERDT scholars to take a
techpreneurship class.”

Laying one of
the ground rules for the class, he said, “Everyone here in class has to
participate. There is no such thing as an observer in this class. You’re here,
you join a team, you pitch a venture, you work on your venture.”

Measurement of
how a student fares in class is determined on their performance on the last and
most critical day, demo day. The teams will be rewarded with points based on
how well their pitches are received by the panelists, and how well they are
able to respond to the panelists’ questions. The ventures are rated, in turn,
by a “yes”, “no” or “maybe” having equivalent points.

Sison further
explains that the end goal of the course is market validation, “Does your
product address a solution that the end-users, the customers, are willing to
pay for? That is the goal, and students are allowed to iterate both the
technology, the business model, and even the target market until they’ve
achieved that goal.”      

The course has
received numerous awards, both for its founder and for the course itself. Sison
won the UP Gawad Pangulo for Progressive Teaching and Learning in 2015.  Two silver medals, Asia Category and Teaching
Delivery category, were awarded to HIRIT and Sison, respectively, in 2016 at
the third Reimagine Education
Awards
, a global competition for transformative initiatives across the
educational sector.

After being recognised with Reimagine Education
Awards, the course has been adopted by the Department of Science and Technology
(DOST) as a program supporting the development of other incubators, with UP
providing training content and process. A plan for expansion is in the horizon
as it becomes a part of the project initiated by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) involving
a core of 10 universities.

PARTNER

Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

PARTNER

CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

PARTNER

Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

SUPPORTING ORGANISATION

SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

PARTNER

HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

PARTNER

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

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