The Heroes’ Journey: ilumina LCD iTV

The Heroes’ Journey: Ilumina LCD iTV

The story of the Ilumina as shared by the Founder & Chief Inoventor of Inovent, Inc., Brian Quebengco

The story starts with my dream for Inovent Inc. to champion Philippine ideas. After reading ‘Built to Last’ in 2001, I always felt that we could do what Sony did and make ‘Made in the Philippines’ mean something.

After 6 years, late in 2007, I read an article about a small company in the US besting Samsung and Sony to become the No.1 LCD TV seller in North America. And surprisingly, Vizio, Inc. did it in 5 years. This was when I got the idea of penetrating the LCD TV market because I noticed that it was becoming a price war and there was no new value being introduced to consumers’ lives. No radical inovention. But I also had to find a consumer niche that wasn’t being answered by existing LCD TVs. This is where i noticed the great divide between TV, PC and the Internet. And the answer I got was an LCD TV with a separate PC component and internet connectivity. This is when I decided to call it the LCD iTV category; a fresh and new category.

Come January of 2008, my first task was to work with the Senior Inovent Design team composed of Peter Can, Jaed Del Moral & Jonas Peralta to see if we could design a new LCD TV. After the team spent hours in electronic shops and many attempts in design, I finally had a thought. “What if you could cover the sides of the LCD iTV when it was mounted?” And after advising Jonas Peralta on curving the sides to reach the wall, he was able to perfectly execute and design the look of the LCD iTV. What also stood out was the utility design function of allowing the LCD iTV to stand on its own with out a stand. I immediately patented it.

It was also in the month of January that I decided to brand it as the ‘Ilumina’, which signified light and knowledge. I wanted this to be a symbol of what’s best in the Philippines. Wayne Yaptinchay, one of our Senior Design Inoventors helped me with designing the fonts of the Ilumina logo. I immediately filed the logo with the IPO.

My next task now was to go on a road show and build a Super Team of experts in the field of Electronics Engineering and Software Development. In February of 2008, a good friend Ivan Porcaua (who will hopefully join Inovent after he graduates from DLSU) introduced me to Noriel Mallari, a Professor of Electrical Engineering in DLSU. After showing Noriel the design and explaining the big task at hand, he accepted my offer to join the team. Aside from being the best in Electronics Engineering, Noriel was very young and eager to champion Philippine ideas. He was perfect for the mission.

And as faith would have it, I met Mark Ruiz early in 2008. Mark Ruiz was already a well-known, seasoned entrepreneur and teacher of Innovation. And it was a blessing that we both shared the passion for Inovention and the belief that the Philippines could champion globally creative Ideas. It was just common sense to humbly invite him to join the team to help Inovent Inc. further its cause.

Finally, after seeking advice from my cousin Jojo Quebengco, I realized that I could tap a software company to help design the software and interface of the LCD iTV. Initially, me, Noriel and Ricson Que (IT Director at DLS-CSB who was helping me out in finding programmers) were trying to invite individual software programmers, but this proved to be futile because they all had full-time jobs. I decided to change my approach and ask Mark Ruiz if he knew any software companies that would fit the bill. He immediately recommended Ruben Canlas Jr. of Dig It All Solutions Inc. And upon visiting him during a talk he had with Intel at the Renaissance Hotel in Makati, I was very happy to find out that he too shared our dream that we Filipinos can do it. Now it was time to begin the impossible project.

The code name we gave the project was “Project Faith”, which pretty much expressed the amount of faith we would need to pull this impossible stunt. July of 2008 was when we began. The team was broken into 4 units: Industrial Design (Peter Can, Jonas Peralta, & Jaed Del Moral), Hardware (Noriel Mallari), Software/Interface (Val Gonzales and Jon Danao of Dig It All Solutions Inc.), and Viral Marketing (Mark Ruiz, Ruben Canlas and myself). We all had full-time jobs, short on people, and very low on cash. And with an audacious timeline to launch the prototype within 4 months, we decided to throw it up to faith and press on.

What transpired was the wildest and craziest time of my life working with the best of the Philippines doing the impossible. The trio team of Jonas, Jaed, and Peter made the mold with their bare hands buying raw materials and mixing them together!  Noriel, in spite of badly getting sick never slowed down his pace and assembled it together in his garage. Being responsible for the hardware and electronics made him the middle man for both design and software. Val and Jon were able to do rapid prototyping of the Ilumina interface by using open source software. This is normally a task reserved for 4 to 5 programmers, yet they all did it while balancing their day jobs. Ruben, Mark and I focused on managing the team and the quality of the work while preparing and planning the execution of the viral campaign. Mark was responsible in starting the blog campaign as well as the teaser videos for the Ilumina and Inovent Revolution. Respectively, Mark tapped the help of Dwight Co who designed the awesome logo for Inovent Electronics, Inc. and Matthew Cua who pumped up our blood with his inspiring radical videos for both the “Inovent Revolution” and “Ilumina teaser.”

And along the way, special Filipinos who believed in our cause came to our aid and gave us their full support; Dennis Posadas, Ricky Rivera, Alex Villafania, and Pierre Galla. It’s just a few more hours to go before we unveil to the country and the world what the Philippine’s best can do, and the drama and suspense of this journey composed of many heroes will finally begin tonight. We Can Do It!