By RODEL G. OFFEMARIA
Editor

In the highflying technology-driven societies, robust ideas and technologies are invariably bolted from the laboratory to the market.  The frenzied rate of technology development, maturity, replacement, and innovation now spells market presence and dominance, or doom.

Globalization, time compression, and technology integration fuel such winner-take-all environment.  In other words, the most creative, agile, and adaptable individuals and organizations now rule the world.

The challenge to a developing society is to sort the wild tangles of a knowledge-soaked competition and find untouched opportunity and exploit it to the hilt before anyone rides the bandwagon faster and meaner.

The Industrial Research Foundation grapples with such circumstantial whirlpool.  “Industry must undertake research and development to survive”. 

The warning was IRF's motivation to “forge a strong bond between industry and the 102-year old Industrial Technology Development Institute, an agency of the Department of Science and Technology.  That bond began to stick on September 30, 1983, IRF's founding.

 Former DOST Secretary Filemon Uriarte Jr. initiated IRF along with 15 others “as a broker of ITDI technologies, caretaker of contract research funds, and technology transfer” channel.

To promote industrial research IRF “assists DOST in its constant search for better delivery of S&T services”.  It acts mainly as conduit between DOST and industry.

Over the years IRF “enhanced” ITDI's R&D reputation in developing and offering technological solutions to industries such as food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and construction, among others.  ITDI also carries out tests and analyses, equipment design and fabrication, and product and process improvement services.

In 1991, the IRF-ITDI partnership produced the “services subscription program” that enhanced the capability of the local paint, print, ink, and adhesives industry.  IRF essentially “packaged” ITDI services and sold it to industrial “subscribers”.

In the same year IRF brokered the ITDI-Surface Coating Industry Association collaboration and the establishment of a surface coating R&D center.

DOST also commissioned IRF in 1993 to organize and manage PhNet, which linked the country to the Internet for the first time.  PhNet wired DOST along with University of the Philippines-Diliman, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, University of Santo Tomas, St. Louis University in Baguio, University of San Carlos in Cebu, and Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro.

A US-based chemical company also used ITDI's microbiology and genetics division as its products' Asian test facility through IRF's efforts.  The foundation also managed funds for a Japanese-funded ITDI wastewater treatment system.  The system can treat organic pollutants.

Currently the IRF is working jointly with DOST and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the implementation of Area Technical Committee, an initiative “to bring technology to the remotest barrio”.

The project aims to create chapters of ATC in all 15 regions nationwide.  “It is envisioned as a tool to upgrade existing industries, promote new enterprises, and develop solutions to technical problems”, IRF in a statement said.

The ATC project complements DOST's Small and Medium Enterprises Technology Upgrading Program designed to boost SMEs through a package of technical and financial intervention.

A related IRF activity is called “localizing technology solutions”.  LTS aims to mobilize “all technological resources into an integrated and certified semi-autonomous technological community”.

Implementation of LTS requires three things; recruitment and development of an area technical experts pool, mobilization of academe and private technical facilities into a technical network, and expansion of DOST regional facilities to meet additional TechNet needs.

ATC's value-added is in the building of “ATC superstructure to transform the countryside, institution of year-round productivity improvement programs, exhaustive inventory of area resources and systematic matching with DOST-developed technologies that would lead to new enterprises.

Over the long haul, IRF sees the ATC project to “create a culture of technology awareness within communities”.

The IRF presently has 21 individual and 53 corporate members that are mostly industrial giants in the country.