On Thursday, May 30, the Impulso Federal Mendoza meeting on competitiveness, economic development and innovation took place, an event that sought to convert scientific-based projects into startups with global impact, in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), investment funds and sector specialists.
The meeting began with the greeting of Martín Alfie, head of Federal Development of the CFI, followed by the Minister of Production, Rodolfo Vargas Arizu, who welcomed the event and immediately gave way to the first panel: “Economic development strategies and financing mechanisms ”, moderated by Victoria Dion, Graduate in International Relations and External Consultant for International Organizations.
This first instance of reflection included the participation of Fernando Vargas, senior specialist in competitiveness, technology and innovation at the IDB, Marco Dini, economic affairs officer of the Productive and Business Development Division of ECLAC, and Ernesto O’connor, Ph.D. in economics and researcher at the Argentine Catholic University and Federico Morabito, president of the Mendoza Agency for Innovation, Science and Technology.
In this space, various aspects of innovation and competitiveness were addressed with the aim of having a regional vision of Latin America in this area, in order to, through the exchange of good practices, apply examples of success cases in different grassroots projects. scientific and technological in order to become startups with global impact.
During the presentation, the economic affairs officer of ECLAC highlighted the fundamental role of the Territorial Productive Articulation Initiatives (IAPT) for innovation and productive development, since these initiatives represent the main opportunity to address the barrier of low growth. productive that has affected the region in the last decade.
“Innovation and digital transformation are creating new opportunities, but they also generate different levels of response in the region. These dynamics cause gaps that tend to widen between the most industrialized countries, which can take advantage of these new tools to boost productivity significantly, which leads to a complex international and regional scenario,” explained the ECLAC official.
Faced with this scenario, Marco Dini maintains that to address this gap, a response must be made through productive policy that adjusts to the specificities of each territory: “it must be a comprehensive productive development policy, which covers the most traditional issues, but that they act in a new way”, taking into account the different disciplines and areas that are required to promote a sustainable and inclusive productive transformation. This modality of doing productive politics is based on agreements between the public, private, academic and civil society sectors and on an effort to promote convergence between the different entities involved. Furthermore, this policy must be designed with a multi-level governance approach, that is, where the central, provincial and local levels also dialogue.”
Finally, he spoke about the creation of the Cluster Initiatives Platform and other IAPTs, as an example of a successful innovation project: “through this mechanism it has been possible to georeference the different IAPTs of Latin America and the Caribbean, which has allowed ECLAC to demonstrate the importance of associative work in the region,” commented Dini.
Currently, Argentina has a record of 38 cluster initiatives and 23,548 companies are part of it. In the same way, in the city of Mendoza there are only 5 registered initiatives, so participation in this meeting and the exhibition of the Platform seeks to promote the participation of the scientific sector of this country.
Add Comment