INVESTORS looking at Cebu as a potential destination for information technology-business process management (IT-BPM) business relocation and expansion shouldn’t solely rely on Tholons’ ranking report.
Pert Cabataña, president of Cebu IT/BPM Organization (Cib.O), said the Tholons 2021 Global Innovation Index has become a “useless piece of information,” especially since Tholons has changed its “measuring stick” which resulted in the change of ranking.
From ranking 15th in the Top 100 Super Cities by Tholons in 2020, Cebu City nosedived to the 52nd rank.
The Tholons Global Innovation Index 2021 report placed emphasis on digital innovation, re-imagining of consumer experience, transcendental knowledge, future readiness, digital competitiveness and diversity and inclusion.
While there are new entrants in the report such as Australia, Norway, Finland and Germany, Cabataña questioned the exclusion of China in the list, which he described as an “elephant in the room.”
“We know that China is very innovative. How come they aren’t measuring China? So we don’t necessarily worry on what Tholons is saying because we know what we need to do with or without Tholons. We know what our weaknesses are and the actions that we need to do to be better, a lot better,” said Cabataña during the launching of the Cib.O Transformation Summit 2021 slated on July 12 to 15, 2021.
He said better actions plans under the new normal will be highlighted in the upcoming summit.
Instead of using Tholons, Cabataña urged investors to look at the country’s ranking in the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitive Index and Bloomberg Innovation Index.
“We can no longer rely on Tholons,” he said.
In the past, Tholons ranked countries as outsourcing or offshoring destinations, but it recently shifted to ranking countries as digital nations and that includes the presence of pure play companies such as Airbnb and Grab, among others, which the Philippines doesn’t have.
A pure play is an investors’ term for a publicly traded company that focuses its efforts and resources on only one line of business.
WEF ranking
The Philippines ranked 64th out of 141 countries in the 2019 WEF Global Competitiveness Index, down by eight notches from the previous report.
In terms of infrastructure, the Philippines ranked 96th from 92nd in 2018; institutions – 87th (from 101st); healt h- 102nd from (101st); labor market – 39th (from 36th); ICT adoption – 88th (from 67th); macroeconomic stability – 55th (from 43rd); skills steady at 67th; product market – 52nd (from 60th); financial system – 43rd (from 39th); market size – 31st (from 32nd); business dynamism – 44th (from 39th) and innovation capability – 72nd (from 67th).
Instead of releasing its usual annual report, WEF paused the ranking of countries for the 2020 edition due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
WEF managing director Saadia Zahidi said the Global Competitiveness Report Special Edition 2020 rather evaluated economies based on their performance on 11 economic transformation priorities amid the global health and economic crisis.
Zahidi added that this would be the focus of the Global Competitiveness Report in the next three to five years.
4-day Transformation Summit
Meanwhile, the upcoming four-day Transformation Summit will serve as a platform for key stakeholders in the IT-BPM industry to discuss strategies for the big leap forward under a global pandemic.
This year’s theme is “The Next-Level Play.”
World market trends, innovation and ecosystem development, artificial intelligence, big data, health and hygiene, economic forecast, digital education and changed work environment are some of the issues that will be discussed during the summit. (KOC)