Are you ready for the AEC?

“Reinvent yourself!” That’s the title of one issue of the Alumni Magazine of one of the best business schools in the world, the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. I was fortunate to have been closely associated with the professors of this institution which, year in and year out, appears among the top 5-10 business schools in the world in listings of The Economist, Financial Times, Bloomberg and other business publications.

The good news is that many of the top professors of IESE will be teaching in an advanced management program specifically tailored to the needs of top executives who will be at the forefront of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) that will come into its own in the next 20 years. The message that the IESE professors are sending about reinventing oneself will be particularly resonant among Filipino entrepreneurs and corporate executives who will still be actively involved in business in the next 10-20 years, during which the Philippines will finally be one of the fastest-growing economies in the Asia Pacific, thanks to its educated, young and growing population.

If you are a business person in your 40s and have been operating in the Philippine business environment over the last 10-15 years, during which our country was still known as the “sick man of Asia,” you could have developed a mindset and business practices that will be most probably unsuited to the “breakout nation” or “tiger economy” that the Philippines is expected to be in the next decade or so. One of the IESE professors with whom I worked, Mike Rosenberg, said something especially relevant to the circumstances that Filipino businessmen are facing today: “Too many companies pretend that tomorrow is going to be the same as today. But we know that tomorrow will be different.”

For example, it would be unwise for business people in their 40s to assume that the trend toward the demise of most manufacturing activities—which resulted from the failed industrialization polices of the last century and the increasing service orientation of the Philippine economy—is a foregone conclusion. On the contrary, manufacturing is making a strong comeback in the Philippines because of the acute labor shortages in northeast Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and even China, thanks to its one-child policy.

Ask Peza Director Lilia de Lima, the longest-staying and most valuable government official in the field of industrialization. After literally dozens of trips to Japan, she has been receiving scores of requests for more space in our export-processing and other industrial zones. That is why she is asking developers of industrial zones to expand their operations and to be much more active in helping Tesda and other private technical schools to increase significantly the pool of electrical and electro-mechanical workers and other skilled technicians that will be in great demand.

IESE professors like Rosenberg, Carlos Cavalle, Bruno Cassiman, and Pankaj Ghemawat are experts in helping experienced business people reinvent themselves. They are constantly issuing the following reminder: “Necessity is the mother of invention and reinvention, and it was necessity that drove Apple to reinvent itself from a struggling computer concern to become the world’s coolest brand. The companies that have successfully reinvented themselves—Dell, Apple, Cisco, IBM, 3M, Philips—have done so because they haven’t let the grass grow beneath their feet, whereas the tens of thousands of businesses that failed to read the writing on the wall are both gone and forgotten. Revolutions tend to be led by visionary individuals, and the same is true  when it comes to innovative companies. Witness Steve Jobs at Apple and John Chambers at Cisco, for example.”

Reinvention applies both to the company and to the individual. I would like to see many Filipino professionals in such traditional fields as law, medicine, engineering, accounting and architecture, for example, venturing into the sunrise industries of agribusiness, tourism, knowledge process outsourcing, fashion and furniture, entertainment and health care.

Owners of businesses (especially family enterprises), CEOs and senior executives of large and medium-scale corporations and budding entrepreneurs may want to seriously consider taking the advanced management program being offered by the University of Asia and the Pacific in tandem with IESE professors. The first offering is ongoing, with some 20 top executives from the Philippines and Indonesia as participants.

Coming from diverse sectors like construction and real estate, investment banking, infrastructures, agribusiness, garments, entertainment, insurance, executive search, management consulting,  retailing, tourism and energy, the participants for the next six months will take a close look at themselves and their organizations as well as the business environment in Southeast Asia with the objective of reinventing themselves and their organizations to take full advantage of the transformation of the Philippine economy into the new Asian tiger. The next offering will be in September. Those interested may get in touch through [email protected] or 63-2 637-0912, local 207.

Dr. Bernardo M. Villegas is senior vice president of the University of Asia and the Pacific. His e-mail address is [email protected].