Launching an original IP content development program for PH

A SEGMENT of the Philippine creative industry functions mostly as creative process outsourcing (CPO), providing material for foreign-created content. Its slow growth in the past, caused by reactive policies and resistance in exploring new avenues, is compounded by competition from neighboring CPO hubs like China and India, which can afford to lower their prices and keep competition like the Philippines at bay. To ensure its growth, it is necessary to come up with a program that shifts focus from outsourcing to creating original intellectual property (IP) content. This shift will open the Philippine creative economy to a bigger and more lucrative global creative market.

A content development program, initiated by the government, can stimulate the local creative economy, particularly the animation industry, by providing financial and technical/education support to our local creative businesses, content developers, artists and students by initiating human and institutional capability-building initiatives in this fast-growing sector. This is expected to promote new business, and spur entrepreneurship and competitiveness in this sector. An ambitious project such as this should identify, develop and support young creative Filipinos with workshops and apprenticeship programs in producing original content in the field of animation with a heavy emphasis on concept, content, delivery and distribution. This is the first step in transforming merely technically adept Filipinos into those who can create memorable stories, which translate to more marketable, in-demand content. Furthermore, such a program can inspire the Filipino youth to pursue a career in this sector or put up their own creative businesses that will help support a sustainable original content production industry alongside the creative process outsourcing industry.