Ateneo BUILD

Ateneo Business Insights Laboratory for Development (BUILD)

Ateneo de Manila University, through the John Gokongwei School of Management (JGSOM), officially launched the Business Insights Laboratory for Development (BUILD) on 23 May 2024. Through expertise from Ateneo faculty and students, BUILD aims to advance the use of operations research, data analytics, financial modeling, generative artificial intelligence, and data platform services to enhance the economic competitiveness of small and medium enterprises in the Philippines. 

ABOUT BUILD

Leveraging on the expertise held across the entire university, BUILD is uniquely positioned to provide external stakeholders with the rigor needed in research for data-driven decision-making and to provide expertise across several domains outside of business, such as psychology, education, health, economics, computer science, and education. The experiences from engagements with the industry partners shall be used to fulfill Ateneo's mission in education, particularly research, curriculum development, faculty development, and student enterprise empowerment.

BUILD will initiate innovation through academic research on topics of interest to students and faculty or influenced by industry interactions. The center will centralize research output in a repository named the Ateneo Integrated Open Library (AOLI). These resources will form the foundation for various initiatives, including internal and public workshops, toolkits for consultancies and managed services, and potential spin-outs.

In a recent statement, Roberto Martin N Galang, PhD, Dean of the John Gokongwei School of Management (JGSOM), emphasized the institution's commitment to advancing digital transformation in the Philippines. He stated, "Our goal is to contribute our academic resources in promoting digital transformation in the Philippines. Many digitalization programs are not designed with our SMEs in mind. We hope that this leads to more economic competitiveness and better jobs for our fellow Filipinos."

The need to establish BUILD came from challenges sustaining and scaling efforts from students and faculty of the Department of Quantitative Methods and Information Technology (QMIT) to engage with industry partners. Before BUILD, students from BS Management Engineering (BS ME) and BS Information Technology Entrepreneurship (BS ITE) needed constant exposure to real-world industry problems through internships and special projects. Faculty also needed exposure to augment course content with practical business applications of theoretical concepts. Through combined faculty-student teams tackling problems of industry partners, stakeholders were more comfortable extending more challenging issues that were otherwise only offered to professional consultants. Managers from industry partners also get up-to-date knowledge and skills available from the university.

Early support for BUILD came from grants from Accenture, computer units from Power Mac Center (PMC), and cloud usage credits from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Since then, sophomores from BS ME and JGSOM faculty have jointly authored and presented several papers accepted in Scopus-indexed conference proceedings. Three startup ventures from BS ITE have already been able to avail of credits from the AWS Activate Program. With its formalization as a center, BUILD has already started securing and pursuing additional partnerships with alumni networks, industry associations, funding agencies, and government units.

For more information, email build.jgsom@ateneo.edu