Collaboration and Open Innovation: Key Ingredients to Improving Philippine Social Enterprise Ecosystem
Part 4 of ISIP’s Visiting Professor Feature
by Adriel Nisperos
“We cannot have true social impact at the right scale
if we go at it alone.”
Concluding this year’s Visiting Professors activity is the deployment of Dr. Esther Obonyo of Pennsylvania State University (PennState). She is an Associate Professor at PennState teaching Engineering Design and Architectural Engineering. She is also the Strategic Initiatives Director for East Africa of PennState’s Global Programs. Coming to the Philippines, she was deployed in two universities: Batangas State University (BatStateU) in Batangas City and Saint Louis University (SLU) in Baguio City.
The Philippines is a very familiar place for Esther. She has been in the country thrice already, including past deployments as a visiting professor at the Technological Institute of the Philippines in 2015 and 2016.
Esther each spent five days at BatStateU and SLU for the deployment to share her experiences teaching humanitarian engineering and social entrepreneurship, and social innovation to a mixed class of engineering and non-engineering students at PennState.
Infusing the “Social” in Technopreneurship
Integrating social impact in Technopreneurship is the focus of Esther’s visits. The main objectives are to teach professors and educators of BatStateU and SLU on infusing social impact concepts and frameworks in the Technoprenuership 101 (T101) subject and to improve the operations of their respective university’s technology business incubator. BatStateU runs the Center for Technopreneurship and Innovation (BatStateU CTI) while SLU runs the SLU Incubator for Research, Innovation, and Business (SIRIB) Centre. Both BatStateU CTI and SIRIB Center serve as Technopreneurship Hubs (TechHubs), a network of universities that leads spurring of innovation and Technopreneurship in various parts of the Philippines.
Esther was first deployed in BatStateU. In her five-day visit, she conducted back-to-back interactive learning sessions with the university faculty, incubator staff, and students. One of the sessions Esther led is about integrating social entrepreneurship activities in the T101 curriculum. Esther engaged a diverse set of participants in this session as other professors from non-engineering colleges and departments also attended. Part of the other colleges’ involvement in the activities is to uncover how non-engineering courses can also support and learn about social innovation.
At the end of the workshop, they were able to develop a lineup of activities for each lesson in T101 related to creating social impact through entrepreneurship. Crafting a module focused on social innovation is one of the key adjustments they have to make in their designs.
Listening through the stories of the professors, Esther observed BatStateU’s huge progress when it comes to fulfilling its system-wide commitment to lead innovations in the country. She cited the multidisciplinary collaborations happening within the university geared towards developing their technopreneurship and social innovation programs and activities.
“They [Deans/Department Heads] are saying that a lot of effort [of the College/Departments] are happening in parallel with one another, and they would like to see more effort being invested in helping them work in a synergistic manner,” Esther shared.
BatStateU was grateful to have Esther as part of their university activities. Jigs Esguerra, a Special Assignments faculty of BatStateU’s Center for Technopreneurship and Innovation (CTI) and also the Program Chair of the university’s Computer Science Program, shared that he was inspired by how Esther teaches engineering at PennState, “It’s amazing to see how Dr. Esther is very hands-on with her classes at PennState. There are a lot of community engagements in the courses that she teaches. I’d like to see that as well in our courses here at BatStateU.”
Following her trip to BatStateU, Esther spent five more days at SLU where she conducted a series of hands-on activities and one-on-one learning exchanges with the university faculty and students as well. Donna Tabangin, one of the faculty members of SLU’s School of Engineering and Architecture (SEA) and one of the founders of the SLU Incubator for Research, Innovation, and Business (SIRIB) Center, shared her realization while attending the sessions, “The Visiting Professors activity was able to help us realize that deep in our minds, we have a spark of social consciousness.”
Esther highlighted in one of her sessions that engineering students at SLU already possess the social consciousness that engineering is a profession that can be maximized to solve society’s biggest problems.
At present, SLU is preparing to launch the T101 subject by the academic year 2020 - 2021. Part of their preparations is to equip SLU’s faculty with knowledge and skills in social entrepreneurship. According to Cynthia Posadas, Dean of SLU School of Engineering and Architecture, the concept of social entrepreneurship is fairly new to the university. This is why bringing in Esther as a visiting professor has been extremely helpful for them.
“It is only through the ISIP project that we are learning the importance of Technopreneurship. Dr. Esther, being with us here, has been very significant. We really need to prepare our faculty and students, so when the T101 is rolled out, we are ready,” Dean Posadas expressed.
Fostering Collaboration and Open Innovation in the Ecosystem
In one learning session at BatStateU, one of the professors asked how the Philippine social entrepreneurship ecosystem can better synergize its efforts to support social entrepreneurs. Esther then provided an example of how open innovation is practiced in the United States to increase collaboration and knowledge exchange between innovators and entrepreneurs.
“Within the social entrepreneurship community in general, there is more sharing of information. There is less competition because we all realize that if we’re going to make a social impact, you cannot walk alone,” Esther emphasized.
She also suggests shifting the conversation more towards open innovation and collaboration, especially when dealing with complex ecosystem problems. Esther believes that people should realize that value is increased when more people are brought to the table to share their expertise and experiences.
“Because the problem we’re dealing with is huge like an elephant. If you go alone, you’ll grab the tail, and you’ll think the problem is the tail. If you go alone, you can easily grab the ears and say it’s the ears. If we have 10 people taking on the elephant, it’s going to be a case of each person solving just one aspect. Their solutions may be great, but then they’ve not really made the impact we’re trying to achieve,” Esther described.
Exploring Potential Partnerships for Growth
This year, Esther shared that she is working on a new initiative called Global Building Network where the goal is to address the lack of adequate shelter affecting more than a billion people across the world. She expressed that in solving this problem, she would need the help of champions from communities experiencing the issue firsthand. This means there are many rooms for collaborations between PennState and BatStateU and SLU, respectively, especially in creating technologies that address issues such as air quality, water efficiency, food insecurity, among others. Aside from the Global Building Network, Esther also shared that PennState has a lot of other opportunities for BatStateU and SLU to maximize.
Esther considers her deployments as rare opportunities because of its two-way exchange happening between her and the universities, “We invest a lot of effort into programs that we are hoping will have a two-way flow of people, students and faculty, and very few of that happens. This [Visiting Professors] is an example of that, and I’m happy that it has happened. I feel privileged. I feel blessed to be part of this activity.”
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The Visiting Professors is one of the activities of the Innovation for Social Impact Partnership (ISIP), a project co-implemented by UNDP Philippines and PhilDev Foundation, with generous support from the Australian Embassy in the Philippines.