PHL among top climbers in global innovation index

The Philippines was named one of the top climbers of the decade following the release of the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2023, in which it placed 56th out of 132 economies, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said.

This year’s edition of the GII put the Philippines up three spots with a GII score of 32.2 out of 100. Its ranking in 2022 had been 59th.

The index measures the innovation capacity of economies based on two sub-indices — innovation input and innovation output.

In innovation input, the index gauges the ability of the economy to facilitate innovative activity in institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market and business sophistication.

On the other hand, the innovative output sub-index measures the economies’ ability to enable innovative activity based on knowledge and technology outputs and creative outputs.

The Philippines ranked 69th in innovation inputs, from 76th a year earlier. It ranked 52nd in innovation outputs, one place lower from 2022.

The Philippines received its top grades in business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs, and market sophistication, while its weakest grades were in human capital and research, infrastructure, and institutions, WIPO said.

Among 37 lower-middle income economies, the Philippines’ innovation capability was ranked fourth just behind India (40), Vietnam (46) and Ukraine (55). It was 11th among 16 economies in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Oceania.

Reacting to the results, Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines Director General Rowel S. Barba said that the Philippines needs to produce more knowledge assets to address the decline in innovation outputs.

“Filipinos need to urgently produce more knowledge assets that positively impact markets and society, in effect, reversing the decline of our innovation outputs to 52nd from 51st in 2022 and 40th in 2021,” Mr. Barba said.

“But we recognize that innovating in these times will also be challenging amid high inflation, monetary tightening policies and geopolitical tensions,” he added.

He said that the improved innovation ranking is a “welcome development” but added that “we have to continue being dissatisfied.”

“Dissatisfied not just in our current posture in the global innovation map but in the current way of things around us, whether products, solutions, systems, processes or practices,” he said.

“We need to develop among Filipinos a mindset that continuously innovates to challenge the norm until such a time that innovating becomes our norm,” he added.

Leonardo A. Lanzona, Jr., an economics professor at the Ateneo de Manila, said that the jump in ranking is mainly due to exposure to digital technology.

“A number of our workers are employed in online labor platforms which means that transactions are undertaken through the internet,” Mr. Lanzona said.

However, he said that the engagement does not mean that Filipino workers are better off than those in other countries as much of their work involves lower value-added activities and poor working conditions, which result in high underemployment.

“This means that we are not productively using our seemingly advanced exposure to these technologies. People are engaged in these transactions for the simple reason that they have no other option,” he added.

Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. Chief Economist Michael L. Ricafort said that the improvement may have to do with the further reopening of the economy.

He added that there are “no more large lockdowns since 2022” and “the final resumption of in-person schooling since August 2022 after being restricted for nearly 2.5 years (also helped improve) productivity and innovation,” Mr. Ricafort.

He added that the second-biggest business process outsourcing industry after India will also help drive innovation.

“The harnessing of technology and innovation to further strengthen its competitiveness in the higher end of the global supply and value chain would be required and inevitable … especially with the emergence of AI and the need to adopt the use of AI-related technologies,” he added.

Source: Business World

See the House Engineers Built From Dirty Diapers

Using concrete and mortar made with shredded diapers could address issues like plastic waste and sand shortages, per a new study

The concrete and mortar used to build this 387-square-foot, single-story house contains 8 percent diaper shreds.

As any new parent can attest, babies go through a lot of diapers. But instead of simply tossing the soiled diapers in the trash, a team of engineers has proposed an innovative way to repurpose them.

Researchers at Japan’s University of Kitakyushu cleaned and shredded dirty diapers to build a small, structurally sound house, they reported in a new paper published last week in the journal Scientific Reports. Their 387-square-foot prototype home keeps roughly 60 cubic feet of diapers out of landfills, which is equal to about 200 diapers, per New Scientist’s Alex Wilkins.

Recycling dirty diapers into building materials could help solve several problems at once, the team argues. Diapers are a leading source of plastic waste around the globe, and they take a long time to decompose. In the United States alone, people threw away 3.3 million tons of disposable diapers in 2018, according to the latest statistics available from the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile, mining sand—which is a key ingredient of concrete and other building materials—is expensive and harmful to the environment; experts are also forecasting an upcoming sand shortage. On top of that, low- and middle-income communities need more affordable housing options.

Using diapers in concrete could help keep more of them out of landfills, where they are slow to decompose.

To test their ambitious idea, researchers first collected dirty diapers, then washed, sterilized, dried and shredded them. Next, they mixed the diaper bits in different ratios with gravel, water, sand and cement to create concrete and mortar. After letting the samples cure for 28 days, the engineers tested them to see how much pressure they could withstand. From those results, they calculated how much sand they could replace with diaper shreds and still meet Indonesian building codes.

For a three-story home, they found diaper shreds could replace up to 10 percent of sand in concrete used for supporting beams and columns; in a single-story house, that proportion increased to 27 percent. In mortar between concrete bricks, diapers could replace up to 40 percent of sand for the construction of non-load bearing partition walls and up to 9 percent for use in garden paving and floors.

And for a complete, single-story, 387-square-foot home, crews could replace 8 percent of the total sand in the concrete and mortar with diaper shreds, the researchers found.

To check their calculations, the engineers constructed a small concrete house using those specifications. While their proof-of-concept home demonstrates their idea is feasible, the concept is far from ready for prime time. For one, they haven’t yet figured out a process for safely collecting and processing large amounts of dirty diapers. The researchers also want to test the insulating and sound-proofing abilities of the newly developed building materials to see if they’re actually a good fit for human dwellings.

Even the floor contains diaper shreds.

“Unfortunately, at this scale, the research has not yet involved waste management and other stakeholders,” says study co-author Siswanti Zuraida, an engineer at the University of Kitakyushu.

Researchers around the world are already testing a variety of swaps to make concrete more environmentally friendly and keep various items out of landfills, including vehicle tires, plastic bottles, disposable coffee cups, construction debris and biochar, a type of carbon-sequestering material made from burned agricultural and forestry waste. Researchers have also tried using dirty diapers to pave roads.

As for whether soiled diapers will ever catch on in construction, some researchers are skeptical. Rackel San Nicolas, an engineer at the University of Melbourne who was not involved in the study, tells the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Nick Kilvert she would “never use it in concrete, that’s for sure.”

Source: Smithsonian Magazine

The influence of real estate brokers’ personalities

The influence of real estate brokers’ personalities, psychological empowerment, social capital, and knowledge sharing on their innovation performance: The moderating effect of moral hazard

This study examined the influence of personality, social capital, psychological empowerment, and knowledge sharing on the innovative performance of real estate brokers. Our conceptual framework was supported by the goodness-of-fit test

results of the structural equation model. Theoretically, our findings supported all seven hypotheses: personality and psychological empowerment positively affect social capital and innovation performance; social capital positively affects knowledge sharing; knowledge sharing positively affects innovation performance; and moral hazard confounds the influence of social capital on knowledge sharing.

In practice, even though real estate is part of the service industry, its most distinctive feature is that the product is one not regularly purchased. Real estate is characterized

by high price and is affected by locational, environmental, transportation, and economic factors. While it is relatively easy to become a real estate broker, salary, service, and work hours affect the mobility of brokers, whose tasks cover connecting with people, objects, services, and professional knowledge.

Thus, personality (being open, hard-working, outgoing, agreeable, and emotionally sensitive) and psychological empowerment (work meaning, autonomy, competence,

and job influence) are factors that are important to real estate brokers. Social capital (interaction intimacy and trust) reinforce the relationship between personality and

psychological empowerment. With the rise of information technology, knowledge has become the greatest asset. Thus, establishing trust between the organization’s members, provoking their willingness to share knowledge, and achieving healthy competition is conducive to teamwork.

Additionally, innovativeness is an indispensable trait for enhancing an individual’s professionalism. The information recipient and sharer can enhance their own competence and competitiveness based on the diverse experiences of their colleagues or through in-service education programs.

Nevertheless, moral hazards are very likely to arise in industries that serve people. Real estate brokers often put their own interests first when they encounter competition from their colleagues or rival companies. This puts them at risk of a situation of moral hazard that terminates relationships and knowledge sharing.

Our findings are consistent with what is seen in practice practical situations. Therefore, personality, psychological empowerment, and social capital generate knowledge spillover through mutual trust and cooperation, and are conducive to enhancing innovation performance, and industry sustainability.

The influence of real estate brokers’ personalities, psychological empowerment, social cap.

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Source: Frontiers