Local inventors: we must encourage them
Media
Part of The Republic
- Title
- Local inventors: we must encourage them
- Creator
- Leynes, Maripi
- Language
- English
- Source
- The Republic Volume I (Issue No.16) 16-31 August 1976
- Year
- 1976
- Subject
- Inventions -- Philippines
- Development Academy of the Philippines
- Rights
-
- Abstract
- [This article feautres the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) projects which aims to identify, describe and develop intermediate/appropriate technology and community innovations. It proposes to study the Philippine invention system primarily focusing on the identification and description of local inventions and indigenous technology, the attendant processes of development and technology transfer, the instrument/vehicle of technology change, and identification of some research and development indicators through consultation and case study investigation.]
- Fulltext
- 10 16-31 August 1976 The Nation THE REPUBLIC BMI RESEARCH □ Maripi Leynes Local inventors: we must encourage them INTERMEDIATE technology com bines the modern qualities of for eign technology and the limitations of a semi-industrialized society such as the Philippines. In this connec tion, one Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) project aims to identify, describe and develop intermediate/appropriate technology and community innovations. It pro poses to study the Philippine inven tion system primarily focusing on the identification and description of local inventions and indigenous technology, the attendant processes of development and technology transfer, the instrument/vehicle of technology change, and identifica tion of some research and develop ment indicators through consulta tion and case study investigation. In relation to this, a research group headed by Dr. Ruben SantosCuyugan, sociologist and chancellor of the Philippine Center for Ad vanced Studies, seeks to identify elements of Filipino innovativeness. Once these elements are known, the government can easily harness the potentials of people possessing such traits. The two studies complement the search for an intermediate tech nology and for the Filipino tech nocrats to introduce it. Most Filipino inventions, DAP researchers found out, are merely “paper inventions”. Of the thou sands listed by the Philippine Patent Office, only ten percent have been produced in actual (not model) size; the rest most probably have rotted in the realm of imagination and pigeon holes. - Possibly,SOrhe^oTthT inventors are just “patent collectors” as one PPO staffer claims. They content themselves with mere ownership of patents and claims to being inven tors, feeling leery of the correspond ing monetary rewards. Others may have been delimited by production costs, for even the manufacture and Jeepneys: Filipinos are ingenious. marketing of models already require capitalization. The Filipino inventor, to com pound his woes, also has to compete with the multinationals who have the resources to produce and sell equipment in commercial quantity. Hence, to earn money, an inventor is forced to surrender, at modest returns', his patent to a businessman or a multinational corporation. He then remains incognito. Problem of Originality. A wrench in the machine, so to speak, is that most Filipino inventions are not originaL They are mainly varia tions of already existing products or processes, utilizing either new or a combination of raw materials or changing a particular stage in the manufacturing process. It could also __ be a new design of an old product It is however, a totally different story in the advanced countries, where innovations, in the true sense of the word, continually take place in research laboratories which are backed by a company’s millions. Heavily-funded inventor-researchers, however, are not recognized individ ually; and the products, as an offshoot of the laissez-faire dictum, do not necessarily accrue to national development. The products nyjst serve multinational interests; the rest is incidental As to why the Filipino inventor cannot be original, Dr. Cuyugan and his staff, after analyzing the data gathered from a hundred respond ents whose names were taken from the list of patent applicants in the PPO, found put that Filipino inven tors are “creatures of circumstance”, or they invent what they perceive to be a felt need. The reason is more in kinship to engineering contin gencies, and nothing else. The trial-and-error factor plays a lead role. Most Filipino inventors start tinkering with basic materials to create a substitute for the doublyexpensiveWestern prototypes. They eventually discover that the scrap metals and iron found in junk shops and other reject materials can be recycled and magically transformed into peso-saving, peso-earning and time-saving devices. Improvisation is the key, keep ing much to the original design and scientific principles employed in the original Though simple it may ap pear, there are few, indeed, who can sit down and invent without any specific problem in mind—an ap proach frowned upon in modern research. Simple Solutions. Simple prob lems, it is said, need simple solu tions; and the Philippines is not so technologically advanced as to get derailed, as it were, by problems beyond pragmatic solutions, beyond the scope of common sense. Exper tise has its reason, but so does native enterprise. Filipino inventors are not what scientific movies are wont to depict; they are people from all walks of life, and trained for some other en deavors—lawyers, teachers, clerks, mechanics, engineers, etc. One, in short, doesn’t have to be freaky to be “creative,” inventive. The average Filipino inventor is usually in his late thirties or early forties, a col lege graduate, without scholastic and academic honors. He starts inventing at the age of 38, and gets recognized as an inven tor at the ripe old age of 5 2. He is, therefore, a “late bloomer”, com pared to his American counterpart who supposedly is already estab lished at 24. At 55, an American inventor is lamented as past his creative peak. The Filipino inventor is usually male. Of the one hundred inventors sampled by Dr. Cuyugan’s group, only one is female. Dr. Cuyugan’s survey also shows that not one of the inventors included in the sample has written scientific articles on the theoretical or practical level. Neither have they demonstrated an interest in the more theoretical or advanced scientific journals. Their interest is concentrated on the applied sciences and mechanics. Theirs apparently is on the level of mechanics, of practicum that evolves its own theore tical structure. From Breakthrough of DAP □ Lessons HOW adequately a manager pre pares to lead, motivate and inspire his staff to concerted action determines to a large extent how quickly and well work will be done. In the Memorandum of Agreement executed on May 15, 1976 between the Civil Service Commission and the Depart ment of Local Government and Com munity Development, Programmed Ins truction Course on Supervision through Self-Instructional Materials (SIM) was implemented. This basic supervisory course is a joint project of the two agencies through the Office of Career and Employee Development and regional offices of the Civil Service Commission and the Bureau of Local Government, and regional and field offices of the DLGCD. The purpose was to reach some 1,650 local government first-line super visors assigned in the rural areas, and thus have few opportunities to attend formal training activities. Programmed instruction offers a solution to the problem of how to bring training to these supervisors. It is a train ing technique by which participants learn by working through SIM. The materials are prepared in such a way that each participant is required to active ly respond to the materials. He is provi ded afterwards with feedbacks and rein forcements. Workers need not be pulled out from their stations and brought to training centers for assembled training because the method calls for participants to work individually on the materials by mail and to proceed at individual rates of speed and convenience. The initial phase of the program, covering the period from October 1975 to June 1976, has drawn a total of 867 participants from all over the country, with 792 passing the course. The 75 who failed can repeat the course in the second phase of the program implementation. Here is the distribution of participants by region: Region 1 46 passed 6 failed Region 2 7 passed 8 failed Region 3 30 passed 0 failed Region 4 209 passed 27 failed Region 5 62 passed 2 failed Region 6 42 passed 2 failed Region 7 125 passed 4 failed Region 8 66 passed 17 failed Region 9 Region 10 Region 11 Region 12 95 passed 45 passed 54 passed 11 passed 1 failed 0 failed 8 failed 0 failed Total 792 passed 75 failed Participants in the 12 regions were composed of municipal and assistant municipal treasurers, division chiefs, sec tion chiefs, and supervising clerks from the various local government offices, high ranking personnel from the police force and from the fire department, ex ecutive assistants (provincial level), as sistant provincial treasurers, postmas ters, market superintendents and muni cipal planning and development officers. Criteria for Selection. 1. Participant should be at least a first-line supervisor of any office in the provincial/city/ municipal government; 2. Participant should be at least a high school grad uate; 3. Participant should not be less than twenty-one nor more than sixty years of age; priority, however, should be given to those who are not retiring within the next two years; 4. Participant should have no pending criminal or administrative charges; 5. Participants from offices wliich have problems in supervision should be given preference along with those who have not undergone any type of training; and 6. A potential supervisor may also be considered upon certification of his immediate chief. Formal training covers the unas sembled stage and the assembled stage. The unassembled stage lasts for a month during wliich the participants have to read in their homes the three volumes of Introduction to Supervision sent to them earlier by the DLGCD through the Bureau of Local Government (BLG). and the regional and field offices of the DLGCD. The three volumes contain 15 learning blocks covering 8 areas of supervision. The eight areas of super vision are: basic organization, communi ty and human interaction, human moti vation, leadership, training and develop ment, work methods improvement, per formance evaluation, and planning, or ganizing, directing and controlling. The assembled stage is for three days. On the first day, participants undergo the first validation. The test papers are immediately corrected and the errors tabulated to determine the weak areas of the participants. The four weakest areas would then be the subject mat ter for the remedial session which fol lows the next day. The activities include lecturettes, games for experiential learn ing and open forums. On the third day, another validation follows, this time to determine who among the participants will pass the course and receive the training certificate. Seventy is the passing score. The self-instructional materials alone do not guarantee the user the ac quisition of the skills of a model super visor. These materials are intended to provide the participant with an “informa tion and awareness base.” Provided this base, the participant may be able to selectively apply gained ideas and knowl edge to carry out his daily work of supervision more effectively and effi ciently. No supervisor need start on his job without at least some information on what supervision is all about. □ - Alma Diputado
- pages
- 10