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Good morning. Okay. I'm here today to share a simple yet profoundly powerful idea – that
small is the new big.
Now, the seeds of this idea were planted in my head by this man,
Mr. Nick Joaquin –
historian, journalist, writer, national artist for Literature. So it would be wise to listen to what he has
to say.
He wrote a very incisive piece called “A Heritage of Smallness” where he made astute
observations about our country, the Philippines. And as the title “A Heritage of Smallness”
implies, it's about our love affair, the Filipino's love affair with everything small.
And I quote, “Society for the Filipino is the small row boat, the barangay.
Geography for the Filipino is the small locality, the barrio.
Enterprise for the Filipino is the
small stall, a sari-sari store. And commerce for the Filipino, is the smallest degree of
retail, tingi-tingi, as evidenced by all of these sachets.”
Now, when you look at his critique, he was basically saying that it is the Filipinos'
smallness in thinking that prevent us from achieving greatness, that prevents our nation
from achieving bigness.
Now, contrast this with other big countries' big achievements. The Great Pyramids of Egypt,
so anybody would look upon these structures, you know, awe-struck. You know, the engineering
genius of the Eiffel Tower still stands tall in Paris now.
And in this land called Middle-earth in the great river of Anduin, stand tall the Argonauts.
I just had to insert that in. Okay.
And it's not just about these big, jaw-dropping, shock-and-awe structures. It's all about – it's
also about big institutions like big media, the printing press, newspapers, big banks,
the financial center that is Wall Street, big government.
But as we look now at the 21st century, all of these big achievements, big structures,
big institutions, these are really being challenged.
In the land of the pyramids, Egypt, there was economic turmoil, social turmoil which
led into a revolution last year.
Europe, as we know, is encountering its own crisis and its own financial crisis. And there's
talk of bailouts here and there.
And the biggest news about newspapers nowadays is that they're slowly dying. And don't get
me started on the banks that were too big to fall, too big to fail- but did.
So this really has to get us thinking, maybe too big is bad, too.
Maybe we need a new kind of hero.
Where the big has failed, maybe it's now time for the small to prevail.
Maybe we have to embrace the reality that small is the new big.
When I say small is the new big, I don't mean one unit of small.
It's not this one single bird that creates the bigness. It's the flock of birds that eventually bubble up and become
a critical mass that becomes big.
In nature, this phenomenon is called “swarm intelligence” where there's a collective
behavior of decentralized self-organized units. We also see this in schools of fish and see
how they move in unison. And we also see this in colonies of ants.
As we see this percolation of swarm intelligence in nature, we then have to ask ourselves,
“Is this also happening in people - with people?” And the quick answer is yes.
But in the 21st century, this collective intelligence has been accelerated by technology –
technology like social media, Twitter, literally the pulse of the planet, and Facebook whom I've
seen a - the TEDxXavierUniversity being very promoted.
Now, if you look at Facebook, two years ago, Time named Mark Zuckerberg as Man of the Year
- as Person of the Year. Just last year, they then named this symbolic individual called
“the Protester” as Person of the Year.
And if you look at the dynamic, two years ago it was about the platform. Last year,
it was about the people using the platform to create change. And it's amazing how all
of this is playing out.
There's this new movement, Occupy Wall Street”, a “leaderless organization”, where people
are self-organizing. They're representing the 99% of society which are jobless, which
are in, you know, the recipients of the economic crisis. And they're rallying against the 1%
that control all the wealth.
And I like this slide because it shows here this slogan, “You can't evict an idea whose
time has come.”
But when I look at the Arab Spring, when I look at Occupy Wall Street, when I look at
all of these movements, doesn't this look familiar? I think it does. Because 26 years
ago – 26 years ago next week actually – we've already seen this happen right here, right
at your doorstep actually.
That's in 1986 wherein millions of ordinary Filipinos inspired by an ordinary housewife
got together to topple a dictator. So again, swarm intelligence is alive and well in people
and it is a movement and it is creating massive forces of change. And that's why I believe
small is the new big. Small is the new big.
We've seen it in nature. We've seen it in people. We've seen it in countries. Can we
see it now in enterprise? Can we see it now particularly in my field, social enterprise?
And I'm happy to share that these are the principles that Hapinoy, our program, ascribes
to. And we work with that small enterprise, that micro enterprise, the sari-sari store.
Now, the sari-sari store is literally the smallest unit of retail. It sells less than
500 pesos per day. The name “sari-sari” connotes various kinds and this comes out
in the store's merchandise: daily household items such as coffee, laundry, noodles sold
in tingi-tingi, very small doses for daily consumption. It's literally so small.
But in aggregate – and this is where the power comes out – there are more than 800,000
sari-sari stores in the Philippines. If you add up all of the sales of these sari-sari stores,
they're actually bigger than the sales of some of the largest supermarkets here,
okay.
But the thing is they're an independent, fragmented, you can even say isolated set of stores. They're
separate from each other.
So if we try to imbibe the thinking of small is the new big, how then do we apply it to
800,000 sari-sari stores? This is how we at Hapinoy are approaching this.
What if we could aggregate, organize and connect these independent sari-sari stores and unify
them under a common banner, under a common brand called Hapinoy? Then maybe we could
have something very special.
And Hapinoy, again, is built on the idea of small is the new big. It creates a certain
nuance. It basically says that the small have power when they band together.
The small have power when they band together.
Individually, each sari-sari store is “powerless” but can you imagine if there were 800,000
of them working together?
But the secret sauce behind the sari-sari store or the Hapinoy program isn't just the
store. It's also the 800,000 women who run, own and manage these stores – the micro
entrepreneurs.
But thinking back to the theme, “Innovation built on tradition”, so we embrace the tradition,
we embrace sari-sari stores, we aggregate and connect them. But let's figure out how
to create innovations out of this network.
And so we at Hapinoy have what we call a path to prosperity because it's not just about
creating more micro grocery outlets. It's really about using this channel, this
network to effect social change.
And when we say that, aside from noodles, coffee and laundry, why can't we bring quality
of life goods such as healthcare, water, nutrition, energy, technology to the base of the pyramid,
to poor communities?
And let me give you some concrete examples of what we're doing that tries to live this out.
Using sari-sari store network of Hapinoy, we've worked with pharma companies to introduce
medicine to poor communities through sari-sari stores.
So the goal really is you have your can goods, you have your laundry. But hey, you've also
got your medicines sold in packets. Very simple idea but again, quite powerful.
Why not take it a step further and also bring in mosquito bed nets, given the whole
dengue phenomenon, that also is penetrating poor communities?
On the other flipside using mobile technology, we've partnered with a telco to introduce
mobile remittance services. Literally, the sari-sari store in the barrio is now like
a mini Western Union. And what it does is it allows access to financial services
to the poor at a cheaper, at a cheaper cost of access.
And we're taking it a step further. We're also working with a social entrepreneur inventor
to bring packetized renewable energy solutions to our stores.
So that's how you build on tradition and create innovation – from groceries to
quality of life goods that could impact poor communities.
Now, when I go back and revisit Nick Joaquin, I think his critique was not so much that
we're small. His critique really was that Filipinos think small. The smallness of our
thinking – that's the problem.
But that problem now has a solution because now we can embrace the fact that small is
the new big. I really don't think the Philippines will be creating pyramids or the Eiffel Tower
in the next few years. I think we have to sort of accept that.
But we're forgetting so many things that we already have - we already have. We have 800,000
sari-sari stores. We've got 40,000 barangays. We've got 7,107 islands. We've got all of
these small, micro things scattered all around the country.
And the trick really is to think big things out of these many small things. So let's embrace
our heritage of smallness and dream big things for our country. Thank you and good morning.