MAP Insights

Diosdado “Dado” Banatao, Silicon Valley giant as a Founding Father of Personal Computer Hardware, was a most practical but quiet nationalist who deserves recognition as a Philippine hero in the global knowledge age.  He may already be an international hero in the age where AI is transforming into a digital teammate of human decision makers (Agentic AI).

 

After the 1986 restoration of Philippine democracy, he was among those who wanted to assist in the innovative reconstruction of the economy especially in a 21^st C technology-led development path to erase poverty.  Being called the Bill Gates of the Philippines added a later mystique to his mission.

 

At a small dinner after the 1^st APEC “summit” in 1993 hosted by the US, I discovered why Dado could legitimately be paired off with Bill Gates’ name. Gracious to have been seated by the host next to Bill Gates himself, as the Philippines hosts the 1996 APEC meetings, I started our conversation on how a $100 personal computer was possible by the start of the new millennium — what some Senior Officials had been hinting in the Seattle APEC meetings.

 

Mr. Gates at first whispered that it is very possible — because a Filipino graduate from Stanford (he did not name) has been working to cut hardware costs dramatically for some time by then. Some guests who overheard the conversation became curious, animating the discussion. Mr. Gates emphasized:  that young man’s invention will be revolutionary.

 

New Perspective of Heroes

 

In the 21^st C., humans need to redefine heroes:

(a)     in the Agricultural Era as guardians of land and survival (protecting village, harvest and clan),

(b)     in the Industrial Age as builders, soldiers, and nation-makers (not raising armies but standards and aspirations across generations) and

(c)     in the Knowledge Age as solvers, connectors, and protectors of humanity (not as warriors of territory but guardians of systems).

 

Mankind needs new metrics for measuring national greatness for a borderless world, and to regroup humanity not for intergalactic enemies, but against itself including the perils from its own AI.

 

From data to information to knowledge to wisdom, human decision-makers need people like Dado whose view of heroism is no longer the conquest of physical land territory, but the expansion of win-win possibility for all – as sand transforms to microchips.

 

A founding father of PCs with Bill Gates:  Dado’s Christmas Day 2025 demise “marked the end of an era for the ‘founding fathers’ of the Personal Computer (PC). While Bill Gates built the software world, Banatao built the hardware ‘expressway’ that allowed software to reach billions of people” (Gemini AI response to my prompt, 27 December 2025).

Dado’s reconnection to his home roots:  As an expatriate Filipino with science, technology, and development orientation, Dado’s name as a beginning serial entrepreneur (Mostron, 1984, Chips and Technologies,1985, and later S3 Graphics, 1989) echoed in a few but high-level Filipino diaspora leaders.  These people were responding to the concern for assistance to the Philippines, cognizant of the dark chapters of crony capitalism in our authoritarian past.

 

Among these were former Executive Secretary Rafael M. Salas who served as the first head of the UN Fund for Population Activities, quite successfully, and other Filipinos in the New York UN headquarters. They knew of opportunities for funding expatriate experts to assist countries rising from the dramatic brain drain that had subtly devastated economies like the Philippines.

 

Dado’s Three Phases of National Re-engagement

 

Diaspora for economic transformation: Dado’s structured approach to national re-engagement began with his recognition by numerous grantees of the UN Transfer Of Knowledge Through Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN, established in 1977) program as an individual capable of contributing to the transformation of the Philippine economy (Phase 1). These were people from universities and Dado’s workplaces in California thereafter.

 

The short-term assignments of the UN TOKTEN vs. the permanent return in the Balik-Scientist program proved attractive to many STEM experts in the Philippine diaspora. Permanent return, of course, was not part of Dado’s plans — more opportunities attract agile global leaders like him to thrive across markets in many continents.

 

I heard of Dado’s name from a few top-level engineer whom I met in Manila during a short TOKTEN assignment at the DFA in July-August 1988. My report on development diplomacy concluded with Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) with an invitation from Sec. Manglapus for me to stay and serve the Philippines in the new government after EDSA I.  That is how we personally met.

 

Institutional S&T advice:  Sec. Manglapus created a new unit at the DFA in late 1988, the Office of International Cooperation in Science and Technology (OICST), for me to help shape it, as its first head.   In terms of funding, there were no issues. Aniceto (Chito) Sobrepeña, a former colleague from NEDA, unexpectedly transferred the TOKTEN Philippines portfolio from his office to the DFA OICST, acknowledging its wider and more substantial access to highly skilled diaspora talent.

 

I offered Dado one such grant years later, but he opted to self-fund his return trip to the Philippines after a DFA Dialogue on Science and Technology Projects in the US held at the University of San Francisco (USF) in April 1990.

 

Dado’s ideas then bloomed (in Phase 2) with his advisory support to Filipino expatriates who are mainly STEM and social science experts. Their volunteer services were executed through DFA’s OICST Division I, Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) to benefit private and public programs.

 

Education reform.  Dado’s pathway finally culminated (Phase 3) with him investing in the practical STEM education of Filipinos here and abroad through the Philippine Development Foundation (PhilDev). Towards 2010, our conversations about STAC and Philippine education reform were deeply informed by our own experiences in the US – (case method, structured internships, cross-disciplinary research for Big Picture systems view, close industry linkages, etc.)

Beginning in 2011 at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), Dado spent five years of foreign-faculty-led training engineering deans nationwide. It resonated with an AIM classroom management technique:  other than faculty from top Universities abroad teaching, AIM teachers can also enroll a mix of top education executives as lifelong-learning students together with masteral candidates in management. For example, I found this strategy enables the latter to experience live cases through the weeks of a course I taught for more than 15 years on Regional Integration in Asia focused on education.

 

Lessons:  The TOKTEN-STAC-PhilDev path must have shaped Dado’s mind through the years as an emigrant from a country impoverished by severe socio-economic inequalities, and experienced by his family in Iguig, Cagayan.

 

Dado’s mindset moved sequentially from education, to innovation, to technopreneurship, and to economic transformation. But in all these, Dado preferred the private sector to show the way for 21^st C approaches, thus founding Tallwood Venture Capital in 2000 with his own funds to pursue semiconductor technologies research and development.

I remember a memorable one-on-one conversation in his Atherton home workroom, as we walked through his vast people network displayed in the walls. He insisted that I introduce him less to politicians but more to industrialists, business people, and academics, like his people network, with sincere technology interest for developing the country.

 

It became the premise for his acceptance of the leadership of the Silicon Valley-San Francisco Chapter of STAC.

 

(to be continued)

 

(The author founded and led STACs at the DFA in 1988-1997 to help energize STEM expatriates, like Dado Banatao, in transforming the Philippine economy.  He was the 2023-2025 Chair of the Education Committee of Management Association of the Philippines.  He is Board Member of Bayan Innovation Group Inc. Feedback at <map@map.org.ph> and <fmmacaranas@gmail.com>).