Dr. Jesus P. Estanislao By Jesus P. Estanislao   The transformation in the way we look at our population (not just as a number of mouths to feed, and a cohort to send to school, etc.) needs to be anchored on the challenge that a dynamic world keeps throwing at us. We just have to rise to that challenge, if we are going to get out of our terribly humiliating position as a mere backwater in Asia. And how may we rise up to such a challenge? The answer that another IESE graduating MBA student, Miguel Antonio Benitez, puts forward is straightforward: ensure our competitiveness, and equip our people with competitive skills, moving forward. This is what Miguel Benitez says: “(The) Ease of Doing Business is critical in improving our nation’s competitiveness as an outsourcing (hub). Our recent success in the BPO/KPO sectors is a testament to the inherent strengths of the Filipino, despite a challenging governance/environmental situation. But I wish to emphasize how important it is to enthuse and incorporate the next generation of Filipinos in these efforts of reform. It is very important to curtail the cynicism of future generations of leaders, and to create a space for these young, bright, and well-trained professionals. They should be made eager to contribute to the nationwide efforts of reform.” Miguel does give a lot of importance to governance, by which we all band together and work towards dramatically raising the “ease of doing business” in the Philippines. But in addition to “the governance of public institutions,” this broad-ranging program should seek the inclusion and participation of young, well-trained professionals, with a potential for leadership positions in our country. They have to be weaned out of their cynicism; and they need to be enthused towards participating in nation-oriented governance programs in various sectors of our polity, economy, and society. However, unless a strong base of support is created and strengthened for these young professionals with a high potential for future leadership, their chance of future success may be limited. This is where Miguel comes in with his idea of “putting education focus on STEM.” He states: “We should be accelerating the shift towards higher value-added services, e.g. shifting from call center customer services towards higher HR functions as well as the ‘irreplaceable disciplines’ such as computer engineering that will grow alongside the disruption of AI. We should be pushing for more enrolment in STEM programs. We should be cultivating an engineering mind set from a younger age. We should be foreseeing the direction of the world economy and finding our niche in it.” In the few decades ahead, foreseeing where the world is going is a critical undertaking. But it has to be complemented by ongoing smart initiatives of “finding our niche” in such a dynamically changing environment. Indeed, this is the fundamental transformation we need to bring about: instead of thinking insular, and condemning ourselves to the backwater of international economic, trade, and political relations, we should keep reinventing ourselves for us to play a meaningful and economically rewarding role in the world. We should think and act regional at least, and preferably global.