Monday, February 8, 2010

Networking As Anti-poverty Strategy

Networking is a subject not taught in Philippine schools, yet it is the essence of successful business and is a highly effective way towards mass wealth. Teaching Networking success stories and building a networking culture from High School up can be effective ways to minimize competitive tensions among students while building a ‘mass’ of future graduates mostly oriented towards building ‘mass’ wealth. Case examples:
(1) High School teachers encourage all students to join or form as many school-approved clubs and associations inside and outside the campus as schedules permit. This builds important social skills and a habit of making and keeping friends. The advantages of networking especially as future road to wealth have to be stressed in appropriate school subjects. ‘Networking for future wealth’ becoming part of students’ sub-conscious mind quenches bullying tendencies, develops cooperation instead of competition, and builds a team-building habit. The culture can build a ‘world-scale business’ view thru study of societies, companies, innovators’ biographies, research and development systems, and international marketing strategies that all created wealth thru local and international networking. Such business models can become powerful motivators for building a culture of entrepreneurship among students. Students must be made aware that after High School and College, old friendships are most helpful in getting jobs, building professional networks, joining political organizations to access state programs that lend capital to employee groups, and forming new companies with thousands of employees for ‘sideline income,’ thru use of state loans as capital.
(2) University teachers require all students to form innovation teams in their area of scientific interest. Fundamentally, Philippine science universities must develop a specialization culture coupled with an inventions requirement and subjects on commercializing and marketing of technologies. No student must be allowed to graduate unless he has invented and licensed at least five technologies, with or without a team. This is not as difficult as it sounds. The US Patent Office alone has over six million technologies on file that students may access to produce improvements or derivations based on international market needs. This culture requires State to set up laboratories for hire in every scientific area. The labs have to include prototype-making facilities. All labs have to be managed by scientific associations to avoid political corruption. The innovation culture also requires state to pass laws that grant entrepreneurship loans to thousand-employee groups that set up companies to translate inventions into commercial products that sell worldwide. An endless flow of new technologies from universities and research labs coupled with endless capital formation thru the state financing law assures perpetual creation of new companies and new jobs for bottom poor. Under such conditions, student teams with five or more inventions become millionaires thru corporate licensing, franchising and royalty income. The camaraderie of long and productive team research develops a habit of invention among the masses, making post-graduate teams ‘perpetual inventors.’ Such habit makes sure all redeemed poor never revert to poverty because there are always new products and services available to companies when old industries' markets become saturated.
Currently, these cultures do not exist in the Philippines and the rest of the 3rd World. Consequently no inventions emanate from 3rd World masses and few local-technology 3rd World companies have made it to world-class status. 3rd World companies are typically mere sellers of 1st World products in local markets, or assemblers of imported components for sale to tiny local markets. Result: micro-scale production and sales, few jobs, small profits, subsistence-level salaries, or in short, mass poverty. The imperative thereby becomes clear. If 3rd World peoples want to rise to the 1st World, they have to develop several critical cultures: (1) thousand-employee entrepreneurship thru state loans; (2) scientific specialization; (3) student team invention and innovation, and (4) development of a networking culture from school age and onwards till death amid wealth.

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