Articles, essays, and talks of Rey Lugtu

(Published in Business Mirror under the Mirror Imgae Column, October 19, 2010) After four gruelling years in high school, my eldest daughter is, at last, graduating and entering college. I’ve been trying to prod her to take up entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial management because of her knack for selling things and making money since she was four years old. But, surprisingly, she wants to take up fashion design or interior design. It’s not too bad because she said she wants to put up her own business designing clothes or homes. What is more surprising is that she said the majority of her classmates are taking up arts and hospitality courses—from culinary arts to hotel and restaurant management. This struck my incurable curiosity, and I did my own surveys. After talking to friends and colleagues, they confirmed that, indeed, kids these days are taking up arts and hospitality courses in college apart, of course, from medical technology and nursing courses. The latter courses are u...

(Published in Business World under the View from Taft columng, October 13, 2010) On October 9, I attended the Manila Science High School Grand Alumni Homecoming, where my batch mates and I (Batch ’85) were the Silver Jubilarians. The mood was festive as batch mates, classmates, and friends mingled the whole afternoon until a night of singing and dancing. Our batch had the most attendees, with 50 of the 270 who attended. This high attendance can be attributed to the tight network that our batch had established. From the simple beginnings of an e-mail group in the early 2000s, our network has evolved into a more sophisticated Facebook account. Our network has cultivated not only personal relationships but also business and professional connections. The benefits of social networking to professional life or to the workplace may not be clear to many companies, but they are many. Social networks allow organizations to reach out to and target select groups and individuals. Many sales an...

(Published in the Manila Standard Today under the Greenlight column, September 6, 2010) I recently attended a business meeting in Thailand where colleagues from Asia Pacific countries gathered to present and discuss business priorities. A favorite dinner staple topic among my colleagues was the hostage crisis in Manila. But more interestingly was the observation of many on the speech delivered by President Aquino to the local and international press where he smiled instead of showing grief. Having read the explanation of President Aquino, I quickly defended him. I told everyone that the president’s smile has been misunderstood – he was smiling because of the absurdity of the situation with the police using a sledge hammer and the difficulty of breaching the bus. I also told everyone that the President apologized for having offended certain people. This makes us realize the importance of understanding nonverbal communication in diplomacy and international business. According to st...

(Published in Business Mirror under the Mirror Image column,July 13, 2010) I was listening to a morning AM radio program as the commentators were discussing the latest mandate of President Aquino to stamp out jueteng, coming from a report that the small-town lottery was just a front for illegal-numbers game. Then the commentators interviewed former President Joseph Estrada, where he pointed out that all previous presidents—from the time of President Cory Aquino—wanted to stop jueteng, but all ended up in futility. It was only former President Estrada who wanted to legalize the numbers game, and legitimize the employment of more than 200,000 jueteng minions and for government to collect billions worth of taxes. After hearing the radio-program discourse, it dawned upon me how gargantuan a task President Aquino is facing to eliminate jueteng after failed attempts from past administrations. Jueteng has become so institutionalized in our society that controlling it seems impossible. H...

(Published in Business Mirror under Mirror Image column, June 23, 2010) Sixty thousand barrels of oil a day, according to US government estimates, are being spilled into the ocean as a result of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, which started in April. According to senior officials, this is the worst environmental disaster the US has ever faced, and there is no end in sight until relief wells come into operation, probably in August. British Petroleum, which operates the leaking oil well, said the disaster has already cost it $2 billion. The number of claimants, standing at 64,000, is still growing as the oil continues to spew from the broken wellhead. The damage to the environment will entail huge amounts to repair. In the investigation of the US House of Representatives, BP’s CEO was accused of being oblivious to the risks of his company’s deep-water operations; he said he was “deeply sorry” for the catastrophic Gulf coast oil spill. A closer look at the root cause reveals a combin...

(Published in Manila Standard Today under the Greenlight column, April 12, 2010) Hours of brownout plagued Mindanao at the start of the year, crippling business output by fifty percent. The Mindanao Grid continued to experience generation deficiency because of the limited available capacity of the state-run National Power Corp.’s hydropower plants, most of whose water reservoirs are drying up because of El Niño. In the Visayas, the Cebu Energy Development Corp.’s coal unit had to undergo an emergency shutdown in March, significantly cutting down the Visayas Grid’s available capacity. In the meantime, the second unit of the Palinpinon geothermal facility in Negros Oriental, went on an emergency shutdown, causing the Visayas Grid to lose some badly needed capacity. Bad luck or just plain and simple lack of foresight? Whatever it is, the whole value chain of power supply – from generation, to transmission, to distribution - needs to undergo transformation to make the power grids...

By Mary Ann Ll. Reyes (The Philippine Star) MANILA, Philippines - IBM has opened the ASEAN Telecom Center of Excellence (CoE) to accelerate telecommunications solution development and streamline product delivery in the region. In a statement, the global technology giant said this will help ASEAN telecommunication service providers compete more effectively in the fast-changing market. The center will bring together cutting-edge technical skills, specialized offerings and industry best practices to meet the rising challenges in ASEAN’s telecommunications industry. Located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the ASEAN Telecom CoE leverages IBM’s globally-integrated network of capabilities and partnerships. The CoE offers a range of new telecommunications software solutions based on IBM’s Service Provider Delivery Environment (SPDE) 3.0 framework, as well as hardware, services and business partner applications. Clients will include telco operators, network equipment suppliers, independent software ...