On Thursday, September 12, within the framework of the Working Group on Science, Technology and Innovation with a Territorial Approach of the Conference on Science, Innovation and ICT of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the webinar “The experience of the National Innovation Fund of the Bío Bío Region (Innova Bío Bío): the first case of territorialization of a public fund for innovation and technological development in Chile” was held.
The event was attended by more than 100 participants from 19 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The keynote address was given by Claudio Maggi, Territorial Development Manager of the Chilean Corporation for the Promotion of Production (CORFO) and former Executive Director of Innova Bío Bío (2001-2003), where he presented the experience of Innova Bío Bío, a pioneering regional innovation fund that operated between 2001 and 2015.
The presentation covered the creation and evolution of Innova Bío Bío, highlighting its role as an unprecedented public regional decision-making mechanism for the non-reimbursable co-financing of innovation and technological development projects. The impact of the fund was discussed, which mobilized more than 130 million dollars for approximately 2,200 applied research, technological development, business innovation and innovative entrepreneurship projects.
Maggi explained how Innova Bío Bío was conceived as a program to promote innovation and technological development driven by demand, complementing the “science push” type supply policies previously implemented in Chile. The characteristics that made Bío Bío a good model to pilot this initiative were also discussed, including its mature industrial production matrix and its strong export sector.
The manager also analyzed the evolution of the portfolio of supported projects, showing a trend toward fragmentation into a greater number of smaller projects. Lessons learned were discussed, such as the legitimacy gained by the program in the regional STI ecosystem, but also the lack of robust evidence of a significant impact on the dynamics of regional growth and job creation.
Finally, the transition to the current Bío Bío Development Committee, established in 2015, was presented, and how the experience of Innova Bío Bío has influenced the creation of Regional Productive Development Committees in other regions of Chile was discussed.
This webinar allowed for the sharing of valuable insights on the implementation of regional innovation funds, which could be of great interest to other countries in the region that are considering similar initiatives to foster technological development and innovation at the territorial level.
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