It has become fashionable to say that innovation hubs in regional cities are “not working.”
I understand the frustration behind that claim. We all want faster results. We want more startups that scale. We want more local technologies adopted. We want more capital, more commercialization, and more founders building solutions that matter.
But let us be careful.
In Iloilo, the more accurate diagnosis is not failure. It is transition.
We are no longer at the stage of simply asking whether innovation matters. That case has already been won. Iloilo City has a startup ordinance. The Province of Iloilo has its own startup development ordinance. Western Visayas now has a 2025–2030 Regional Action Plan for Startup Development. Iloilo City has also entered StartupBlink’s 2025 Global Startup Ecosystem Index at #744 globally and #5 in the Philippines. Those are not signs of a city or province doing nothing. Those are signs of an ecosystem that has already built legitimacy and is now being challenged to deliver deeper outcomes.
That distinction matters because words shape policy.
If we call the ecosystem a failure, we risk abandoning the very institutions, partnerships, and public investments that have finally started to create momentum. But if we are honest about where Iloilo really is, we can focus on the real work ahead: moving from ecosystem activity to ecosystem conversion.
That is the conversation we should be having now.
The truth is this: Iloilo already has many of the foundational ingredients that emerging innovation ecosystems fight hard to build. QBO’s 2024 ecosystem mapping identified Iloilo as “the next frontier for startups in food, arts, and tech.” Innovate Iloilo has already framed a long-term vision of becoming “a premier innovation ecosystem by 2030.” There are active public-private collaborations, university-led incubation efforts, startup festivals, and policy instruments that did not exist at this level a few years ago.
So the issue is not whether hubs exist.
The issue is whether they are now connected strongly enough to generate contracts, pilots, investment, commercialization, and scale.
That is where the criticism becomes useful.
A young ecosystem can become addicted to visible activity. Events are easy to count. Trainings are easy to report. Hackathons create excitement. Coworking and incubation spaces provide a tangible symbol of progress. Even the city’s plan to convert its Business One-Stop Shop Center into an innovation hub shows that government sees startups as part of Iloilo’s future. That is a positive sign. But spaces and events alone do not create breakout firms. They only matter if they are connected to demand, capital, talent, and deployment.
This is where I agree with the critics: innovation is not sustained by activity alone. It is sustained by real problems, real buyers, real pilots, and real revenue.
And this is exactly where Iloilo now needs an upgrade.
The next chapter of Iloilo’s innovation strategy should not be centered only on building more programs. It should be centered on building a working market for innovation.
The City and Province of Iloilo are uniquely positioned to do this because they are not just supporters of development. They are also major buyers, conveners, regulators, and demand creators. They manage transport systems, flood response, public health, waste, agriculture support, tourism, education, local economic development, digital services, and local infrastructure. These are not just governance concerns. These are innovation opportunity areas.
So the policy question is no longer, “How do we support startups?”
The better question is, “How do we make Iloilo itself a launch market for problem-solving ventures?”
That is the shift that can move us from inspiration to impact.
What the City of Iloilo should do next
For Iloilo City, the priority should be to turn innovation policy into procurement and pilot policy.
The city already has a startup ordinance that supports community- and academe-based startup development and provides incentives, including tax relief for qualified startups. That is a strong starting point. But tax incentives alone will not create traction if startups still cannot access first customers. The city must now build a structured GovTech and Urban Challenge Pipeline that allows startups, researchers, and innovators to pilot solutions in traffic management, flooding and drainage, public service delivery, health systems, tourism, waste management, public safety, and MSME digital transformation.
In practical terms, the city should establish a City Innovation Sandbox Program. This would identify a small number of city problems each year, issue challenge statements, allow qualified startups and university teams to propose solutions, and fund short-term pilots with clear metrics. The goal is not to award big contracts immediately. The goal is to create a lawful, transparent, low-risk pathway for testing and validating local solutions inside government systems.
That is how startups gain traction. That is how government learns faster. That is how public problems become innovation markets.
The city should also ensure that the planned innovation hub is not just another shared workspace. It must function as a venture deployment desk. It should help founders navigate permits, link to department-level pilot opportunities, connect to procurement units, prepare proof-of-concept proposals, and match with mentors who understand public-sector adoption. If the hub becomes only a venue for meetings and events, it will remain symbolic. If it becomes a gateway to actual city deployment, it becomes strategic.
Finally, the city should update how it measures success. The best metrics are no longer the number of events held or people trained. The better metrics are pilots launched, startup solutions adopted, city cost savings generated, processing times reduced, jobs created, and public services improved.
What the Province of Iloilo should do next
For the Province of Iloilo, the opportunity is different but equally important.
The province’s 2025 startup ordinance, with an initial annual allocation of PHP 5 million and provisions for startup grants, is already a strong signal of leadership. The next move is to deploy that support in a way that reflects the province’s real strengths: agriculture, food systems, logistics, rural services, climate resilience, MSME upgrading, and inclusive local development.
The province should not try to imitate Metro Manila’s startup profile. It should build its own.
That means launching a Provincial Innovation Challenge Fund focused on sector-specific problems in agri-logistics, farm productivity, fisheries, food processing, rural mobility, disaster resilience, digital government, and circular economy solutions. Let Iloilo’s municipalities, cooperatives, MSMEs, hospitals, schools, and farmer groups surface the problems. Then let startups, university teams, and technology developers respond with pilot-ready solutions.
This creates something powerful: an ecosystem rooted in local pain points, local institutions, and local demand.
The province should also organize a distributed innovation model, not one that is overly city-centric. A healthy Iloilo ecosystem should connect Iloilo City with municipalities and growth centers across the province. Innovation should not end in conference rooms. It should reach farms, public markets, tourism corridors, local enterprises, community enterprises, transport routes, and municipal service systems.
In this sense, the province can become the region’s strongest testbed for rural and inclusive innovation.
The PHP 5 million allocation is important, but the province can make it more catalytic by blending grants with milestone-based support. Not all startups need the same assistance. Some need validation support. Some need prototyping. Some need regulatory help. Some need customer access. Some need deployment financing. Smart capital is not just about amount. It is about timing, structure, and linkage to outcomes.
What both city and province must do together
The biggest risk for Iloilo is not lack of effort. It is fragmentation.
When each institution does its own program, runs its own event, and celebrates its own outputs without a common pipeline, promising founders get lost between ideation and market entry. This is where Iloilo must become more disciplined.
City government, provincial government, universities, TBIs, national agencies, private sector leaders, and ecosystem builders should align around one practical startup journey:
problem discovery → team formation → prototyping → incubation → pilot deployment → procurement readiness → investment readiness → scaling
This sounds simple, but in most ecosystems it is the missing middle.
Western Visayas already has a 2025–2030 Regional Action Plan for Startup Development. That plan should not remain just a document. It should be operationalized locally through a shared Iloilo pipeline, with agreed roles for each institution. One university may be strongest in research. Another in incubation. A city office in pilot access. A provincial office in sector deployment. A private-sector partner in market validation. A TBI in venture support. A consortium in ecosystem coordination. If each actor knows its lane and commits to handoffs, founders stop falling through the cracks.
This is also where local capital must be developed more intentionally. The 2025 “Angel Investing 101” activity in Iloilo was a good sign because it showed that the conversation is expanding beyond founders to the local business community. But one-off learning sessions are not enough. Iloilo should now cultivate a small but credible angel and pre-seed network made up of business leaders, family enterprises, industry champions, and local investors willing to support early-stage ventures tied to clear milestones and real deployment pathways.
An ecosystem scales faster when local founders do not have to prove everything alone before receiving support.
A better frame for ILOILO
So no, Iloilo’s innovation hubs are not failing.
They are doing what early and emerging ecosystems are supposed to do: build awareness, legitimacy, infrastructure, partnerships, and policy support. The problem is not that this work has no value. The problem is that this phase, by itself, is no longer enough.
Iloilo has reached a point where the next upgrade must be intentional.
The city must become a first customer.
The province must become a sector-based deployment platform.
Universities must become stronger commercialization engines.
Investors must move from curiosity to participation.
And ecosystem builders must move from parallel effort to coordinated pipeline.
That is how Iloilo stops debating whether innovation hubs work and starts proving that an innovation ecosystem can solve real problems, build real ventures, and create real value in a regional setting.
The future of Iloilo innovation will not be determined by how many hubs we open.
It will be determined by whether the City and Province of Iloilo can work together to turn innovation into public value, private opportunity, and shared regional progress.
That is not failure.
That is the next stage of leadership.
References:
QBO Innovation Hub, 2024 Startup Ecosystem Mapping Reports — includes the Iloilo report describing Iloilo as “the next frontier for startups in food, arts, and tech.”
Iloilo City Regulation Ordinance No. 2023-126, An Ordinance Supporting Community and Academe-Based Startup Development in Iloilo City and Providing Incentives Thereto.
Philippine News Agency, “Iloilo province boosts startup growth with new ordinance,” January 9, 2025.
Philippine News Agency, “Western Visayas unveils dev’t plan for startups,” September 16, 2025.
Innovate Iloilo, Innovate Iloilo Roadmap 2023–2030.
SunStar Iloilo, “Government center to transform into startup hub,” March 19, 2026.
DOST Region VI, “Angel Investing 101 brings insights to Iloilo’s local startup scene,” April 12, 2025.
StartupBlink, Iloilo City Startup Ecosystem, 2025 ranking.
Rayjand Talaban Gellamucho writes from the intersection of startups, innovation, and organizational development. Based in Iloilo City, he serves as General Manager of ISAT U Kwadra TBI and Technology Transfer, supporting founders, researchers, and institutions in turning ideas into impact. His perspective is shaped by years of ecosystem-building work and by his OD grounding through Ateneo CORD, which continues to inform how he thinks about leadership, culture, and building through complex change.