Unfortunately, the Philippines slid from 51st to 59th in the Global Innovation Index 2022 released last week. This is our second straight year of falling behind.

While we continue to take heart in the fact that our country remains to produce more innovation outputs than what our resources permit, the GII 2022 also reminds us of how urgently we need to sustain our momentum in advancing innovation, especially as this is key to our full recovery and resilience.

Pulling down our rankings are double-digit decreases in the Education and Tertiary Education sub-indicators under Human Capital and Research, Knowledge Creation and Knowledge Impact sub-indicators under Knowledge and Technology Outputs, and Creative Goods and Services sub-indicator under Creative Outputs.

On intellectual property, the top laggards were Industrial Designs (ID), which edged down by 10 spots, followed by Cultural and Creative Services Exports (-9), Utility Models (UM) (-7), Patent Families (-7), University -Industry R&D Collaboration (-3), and Trademarks (-3).

Because the report used 2020 data in measuring the purchasing power parity to GDP for ID, UM and Trademarks, it is likely that the 2022 decline is capturing our record-low filings in 2020 when business was subdued by Covid-19.

As to promoting the export of our cultural and creative services, IPOPHL has been pushing our creative talents to own and conquer the global stage.

One of the recent efforts to show how intensively we've been pursuing the global dream was when we held the first-ever Philippine International Copyright Summit in 2021, which gathered about 50 local and foreign speakers from various industries. These speakers brought a wealth of experience to the table that helped local creators more deeply understand the changing competition dynamics across global creative markets.

At present, IPOPHL is also closely navigating the metaverse and the overall decentralized infrastructure within the Web3.0 environment that is creating opportunities accessible to big and small players alike.

Our creative industries are truly showing to have a high-potential growth with National Feature Films, Printing, and Other Media, and Mobile App Creation climbing 29, 17 and five spots, respectively, in the GII 2022.

I am confident that we will see our artists' full potential unlocked with the recent passage of the Philippine Creative Industries Development Act, which aims to bolster high-value Philippine creative and cultural outputs. With IPOPHL part of the council mandated to implement the new law, we hope to help more artists understand the value of protecting their copyright and related rights.

In the end, we hope to witness a Philippine wave similar to the Korean wave that took over the world at unprecedented heights.

In innovation, IPOPHL continues to expand the reach of its Innovation and Technology Support Office Program, which aims to help universities, colleges and researchers promote stronger collaboration with businesses.

Our ITSO provides extensive training to members in patent drafting and using patent search for finding white spaces in innovation that they can fill in. The program also provides free advanced workshops on IP policy development and review, IP curriculum development, and IP commercialization.

We at IPOPHL will shift gears in bolstering meaningful innovation outputs across our ITSOs. After all, our ITSO members are proven hotbeds of innovation and have contributed to pushing the country's innovation ranking from 100th in 2014.

From our history, we know that things as great as a 50-spot jump in the GII can happen in six years. Now with the National Innovation Council and Philippine Creative Industries Development Council — both of which IPOPHL sits as members — our kababayans can expect increased investments poured into developing a mature knowledge economy.

We aim not only to accelerate the reversal of our two straight years of decline in the GII but also finally break free from the limits that constrain the Philippines from being the innovation achiever and creative superpower it can be.