Davao’s I.T. industry is at a crossroads. Things are finally starting to happen: the various I.T. associations have at last recognized an umbrella organization; other industry associations are now on the road to aligning themselves with the I.T. industry; local companies are now more aware and accepting of I.T. products and services. So where do we go from here?
Let’s take a look at what Davao’s I.T. industry comprises. We have about a dozen software development houses, pus any number of freelance programmers. We have a few computer graphics design outfits, plus who-knows-how-many freelance CG artists. We have a couple of CAD providers, maybe one or two more. There’s a micro incubation facility for startup tech companies. Two major contact centers plus a handful of small operators. Four maybe five medical transcription companies, and possibly a handful of home-based transcriptionists.
A healthy number of computer vendors that can supply most hardware requirements, and service centers for some brands are also present. Not to mention the hardware sector’s association is the local industry’s most successful.
In terms of I.T. education, most major colleges / universities offer courses in various fields. Specialized training facilities operate here as well.
Any hard figures out there? Not yet — as I’ve blogged about in a previous post, we have yet to conduct a local skills survey. But there’s a bigger concern here: Where are we headed?
We can’t go on waiting for things to happen. We have to decide which direction we will take. The I.T. industry is so huge we can’t possibly encompass its entirety. In other words, in my opinion, Davao must set its sights on a specific area in which to excel. How do we settle upon a choice? We go back to that skills survey! And once we have assessed where our strengths lie, the next big step will be to build on that foundation.
Take the case of Dumaguete. They have limited resources, but they knew where their strengths lay, which is in manpower. In terms of skills, for one thing they have a strong complement of animation experts. So the industry leaders focused their attention on developing that field of expertise. And, they took one proactive step further: they built an I.T. facility replete with all necessary services. That movie’s adage, “If you build it, they will come,” certainly worked in their favor!
A critical ingredient in Dumaguete’s success is their I.T. industry’s cohesiveness. I’m not privy to their internal issues or problems, but to an outsider they certainly appear to be a well-oiled mechanism driven by a unified purpose.
In Davao, well-intentioned each group of stakeholders might be, there just isn’t any semblance of cohesion, nor any unity in our objectives. OK, I exaggerate. They newly-minted ICT Davao umbrella organization does provide us an opportunity to band together once and for all. Hopefully, it will not be a mere venue for discussion or debate, but a vehicle for navigating the inroads of the huge terrain of the I.T. industry.
I think you forgot one thing: Technology Entrepreneurship skills. That is, entrepreneurial and managerial skills attuned to any of the hi-tech industries (e.g. those in the ICT industry).
Hopefully, I will have learned enough from my studies to contribute to that when I come home. On the other hand, I also believe that we already possess much of the knowledge about entrepreneurship and management. It’s just that, some of the relevant people of and around the ICT industries do not realise this. I’ve suggested more than once to a number of people that this technology entrepreneurship movement should tap the minds of management academics and practitioners. Why re-invent the wheel when we already have high-caliber faculty members such as those in UP Mindanao, for example, who can assist in this area. World-renowned (and I’m not exaggerating here) academics such as Prof. Larry Digal, Dr. Behng Concepcion, and Mike Soledad, among others are already there in Davao City. Why are we not tapping them?
I have a number of other ideas in my head, but I don’t want to hijack your comment area yet again. So perhaps I’ll just reserve it for another time.
I agree, we should also take stock of the techno entrepreneurs in Davao. But again, we have no such figures. Looking forward to more posts on this matter at your blog, Mark!