As Christmas festivities have started and many have begun creating their Jose Mari Chan playlists —or even memes — we know that Christmas has definitely come to town. But so should innovation.

As many might have noticed, the last week was filled with good news on innovation, putting to focus the launch of our long-term national innovation agenda and our present position in the global innovation map.

Last 27 September, the National Innovation Council formally launched the National Innovation Agenda and Strategy Document, or NIASD, 2023-2032, with no less than NIC Chair and President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. leading the launch.

The NIASD envisions a dynamic innovation ecosystem at the heart of the nation's goal of transforming the economy and society towards shared prosperity and resilience. To be implemented within and beyond the 25 NIC members — which includes IPOPHL — the NIASD lays down the strategies for realizing this vision.

The document particularly cites a strong innovation policy as a contributing factor to creating a dynamic innovation environment. The set of rules and regulations of an enabling innovation policy must be skewed to streamlining and making more accessible our IP protection services while encouraging innovation actors to work together and share resources.

On the day of the NIASD launch, the World Intellectual Property Organization released the 2023 Global Innovation Index where the Philippines climbed three notches to 56th and maintained its posture as an economy that produces greater and higher quality innovations beyond what is expected of it based on its innovation resources and GDP per capita.

However, while innovation inputs soared, innovation outputs continued to slide.

Our ranking in IP-related factors also went down. International or Patent Cooperation Treaty patents by origin slid 14 places; patents by origin by six places; industrial designs by three places; cultural and creative services exports by two places; and IP payments to total trade by two places.

WIPO noted that faster inflation and hawkish central banks are setting an uncertain outlook for business environments the world over, not to mention geopolitical tensions that continue to rage. All this dampens investor appetite and makes innovation ventures more difficult to finance.

Faced with these greater hurdles, the NIC will be working more relentlessly to help generate more innovations. More importantly, we must ensure that these innovations pour socioeconomic benefits down to the cities, municipalities and grassroot communities if we want the fruits of our innovation agenda to be truly felt.

A timely event to remind us of this need is the Cities and Municipalities Index, or CMCI, Awarding Ceremony held last 28 September. IPOPHL awarded this year more municipalities and cities that had the most IP filing activities and registered IP assets, a testament to the growing awareness of the importance of IP protection resulting from IPOPHL's work in going around the country and boosting our online presence.

We laud all the winners, especially those of the Special Awards on IP Rights, namely, Quezon City in the Highly Urbanized Cities category; Antipolo City for Component City; Taytay, Rizal for 1st to 2nd Class Municipalities; Buguias, Benguet for 3rd to 4th Class Municipalities; and Pakil, Laguna for 5th to 6th Class Municipalities.

For the first time, we also awarded areas in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, namely, Cotabato City as the top awardee and Sultan Kudarat as the second placer — both of which had endured a long history of conflict and underinvestment that had led to poor development outcomes.

We expect more cities and municipalities to be more IP-conscious as we have been further concretizing our presence through our IP Satellite Offices  and IP Help Desks, which extend IP filing services, customer support and IP promotion activities. We now have 32 of these offices scattered across Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao and we intend to open more in the months to come.

With the NIASD in place to guide us, particularly in the vision of achieving inclusive prosperity and resilient societies, the NIC is better equipped to bring innovation to more towns.