Vista Land & Lifescapes Inc., the property unit of the Villar Group, has partnered with University of the Philippines to create the country’s first technopreneurship campus within Vista City’s University Town in Las Piñas.
Vista Land said in a disclosure to the stock exchange the campus, which is envisioned to become the birthplace of local tech start-ups, would be built on a five-hectare land donated by the Villar family.
“A UP campus in Vista City is envisioned to become the birthplace of local tech start-ups that will ensure that the Philippines will remain competitive in today’s global economy,” said Vista Land chairman and UP alumnae Manuel Villar Jr said.
“Education is indispensable for economic development. The country’s human or knowledge capital can now be considered as the key for technological innovation to achieve and sustain inclusive growth that reduces inequality and poverty,” Villar added.
Under the partnership, Vista Land will build the initial campus facilities, particularly an Enterprise Center and Classroom Complex that will offer postgraduate and undergraduate programs in technopreneurship and design engineering for UP students
UP, meanwhile, will design the programs to be offered in the campus.
“The UP Technopreneurship Campus in Vista City’s University Town can give its student-technopreneurs a better shot at bringing discoveries, inventions, and designs to the innovation stage and competing on the bigger world stage,” said UP president Alfredo Pascual.
Vista Land said the concept of such facility was taken from a “think paper” published by the University of the Philippines, which postulates that investment in knowledge capital development becomes key to a nation’s economic progress and to sustaining inclusive growth.
The Philippines, it said, must begin investing not only in education infrastructure, but in a “knowledge suprastructure” which allows the development of multi-disciplinary experts, trained specifically in technology and business—individuals, more popularly known as technopreneurs.
The suprastructure requires investment of both public and private sectors in smart classroom facilities, business incubation spaces and tech innovation zones, located within modern university towns that allow technopreneurs to thrive in a supportive ecosystem like Silicon Valley in California.
Vista City is 1,500-hectare master-planned mixed-use development spanning across the cities of Las Piñas and Muntinlupa in Metro Manila, Bacoor and Dasmariñas in Cavite and Sta. Rosa in Laguna.
Vista Land plans to spend P50 billion to develop the property over the next five years.