Capacity Building and Comparative Study on Technology Management in Southeast Asia

Background

The Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) was commissioned by Department of Agriculture Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR) in 2006 to implement the project entitled “Capacity Building and Comparative Study on Technology Management in Southeast Asia.” The project aims to strengthen the capacity of the DA personnel from the national, regional, and field units in managing technology transfer and commercialization projects in support of DA’s National Technology Commercialization Program (NTCP). It involves the following: Training on Financial Viability; Comparative Study on Technology Management in Southeast Asia; and Workshop on Technology Management Practices.

Objectives

Specifically, the project aims to:

1. train the DA-BAR personnel from the national, regional, and field units in managing technology development and commercialization researches/projects;
2. train DA-BAR grantees on financial viability in order to ensure that their respective research/projects have potentials for commercialization and address the market requirements;
3. conduct a comparative study on technology management practices of selected Southeast Asian countries for general knowledge and practices benchmarking in the Philippines and DA-BAR in particular; and
4. formulate recommendations on how to improve technology management practices in the Philippine agriculture sector.

Components

The project has two major components, namely: (i) In-country Training on Financial Viability of BAR Research/Project Grantees and the (ii) Comparative Study on Technology Management in Southeast Asia.

1. Training on Financial Viability entitled “Profitability of New Production and Processing Technologies.” The training modules include the following:
   1. Cost and Returns Analysis and Income Statement Analysis;
   2. Break Even Analysis;
   3. Partial Budget Analysis and Break Even Budgeting
   4. Financial Cash Flow Analysis (Types of Benefits and Costs in Financial Cash    Flow Analysis, Undiscounted Measures of Project Worth: Payback Period and   Return on Investment (ROI), Discounted Measures of Project Worth: NPV, BCR and IRR, Sensitivity Analysis: (Including the use of sensitivity indicators and switching values technique); and
   5. Workshop/Laboratory
2. Comparative Study on Technology Management among Southeast Asian countries. The comparative study is intended to identify and analyze the best practices in technology management used by other Southeast Asian countries and to determine which of these practices could be adopted/adapted by the DA-BAR to improve the performance of the NTCP in particular and improve the technology management practices in the Philippine agricultural sector in general. The study covered four countries, namely: Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and South Korea and focused on the following areas:
   1. environmental policies in technology development, transfer, and commercialization;
   2. institutional environment for technology development, transfer, and commercialization;
   3. technology development processes;
   4. technology transfer and commercialization practices;
   5. value creation and value addition in agricultural products;
   6. incentive mechanisms;
   7. private sector participation;
   8. academe/NGO/cooperative initiatives
   9. local and international markets; and
   10. strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

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