Viable technologies for Sustainability and Local Integrated Development, Tech/SUDIL

8/11/2019 Viable technologies for Sustainability and Local Integrated Development, Tech/SUDIL

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Viable technologies for Sustainability

and Local Integrated Development, Tech/SUDIL

Miguel BriceoCoordinator of Tech/SUDIL

Universidad Central de Venezuela, [email protected]

Abstract

This paper is aimed at presenting the project of the creation of a Virtual Group made up

of highly-qualified technology specialists of different national and foreign universities. The

task to be performed by the group would be the creation of the framework necessary for the

university to perform its new role within the knowledge society. The creation of

technologies applicable in a framework of sustainability and local integrated development

will pave the way for the participation of the Venezuelan university in the solving of

problematic situations at the local level with a global perspective and the implementation of

the following strategy:

Interaction among universities, local governments and communities aimed at fostering

competitiveness and higher life-quality standards.

Interaction among the different universities, as a group, which should in turn interact

with the local government and the communities, in order to achieve sustainable

development.

Generation new appropriate technologies and adapted to the increment of the local

productivity and the economic diversification of the areas of the Venezuelan Andean

Highlands and Northeastern Coast of the Caribbean, respecting the ecological balance

and the local cultural identity.

KEY WORDS: Appropriate or ViableTechnologies, Sustainability and the Local Productivity,

Andean and Caribbean Region, Centers of Technological Innovation.

Current situation

The university in Venezuela has always played a fundamental role in helping

communities to develop economically and socially. Each faculty and knowledge area

within the university has been working or is working in this sense. There are plenty of
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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research projects on different zones carried out in the framework of various scientific

disciplines of our universities, as well as agreements with the local and regional

governments, which have tremendously incremented in the last years. This can be also said

of projects carried out in the context of university extension. So, in general, there have been

positive results that are now clearly increasing.

Most of these actions are carried out in an efficient but isolated way. Each project has

its origins in a different situation and has objectives and a grade of specialization that

hinder interaction with other projects carried out in the same place. It can be said, therefore,

that efforts and resources are dispersed if we consider this situation from the viewpoint of

the recent trends on sustainability, such as those stated in Agenda 21, which focus on:

Against this framework, Venezuelan universities should start by adopting an

interdisciplinary approach endowed with an applied nature. They should not only carry outinfrastructure and basic research subprojects, but also significant research based on

integrated analysis of the population dynamics and the economic and sociocultural

development, in order to be able to address theoretical, conceptual, methodological and

technical aspects of policies and management in concrete localities, with their variables and

consequences. By considering the historical and anthropological factors, they should study

the economic, social, cultural, political and environmental interrelations, and their linkage

with demographic variables changes, and they should as well identify and analyze the new

strategies of structural adjustment and equity, the emerging role of the private sector, the

modernization of the Federal State and administrative decentralization. This way,

architecture and civil engineering subprojects would be integrated and based on a human-

centered perspective.

Project of Innovation Centers and Enterprise Incubators

This project is aimed at creating centers for the development of technologies

applicable in a framework of sustainability and local productivity in adequately built and

equipped places of pilot localities, with the active participation of universities, public

financial support and private investment. These centers should generate sets of projects that

should transform into new competitive enterprises that will replace the old production units


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by providing consulting and training services in entrepreneurial, technical, productive,

industrial and commercial fields, which are needed for the transformation of projects into

enterprises that are competitive at the national and international level.

The idea is also to be able to offer common administration and office services and to

create areas and technological services that can be used by the whole community. All this

would seek the reduction of capital need in the starting phase of the technological

development projects and of enterprises, as well as a better basis for their survival by

ensuring a true competitive performance from the very beginning.

This would not only result in more efficiency of the enterprises produced in the

incubator by providing them the amount of resources that they need when they need them.

It would also foster production diversification and widen the labor market spectrum of the

zone, which is necessary to achieve the diversified insertion of the inhabitants to the neweconomic structure that will be possible mainly through the implementation of this project

of Innovation Centers and its Incubator.

The idea of generating adapted and appropriate technologies to the necessities of the

local productivity and consequently to incubate companies has begun three decades ago in

Europe and it was conceived in order to face the deterioration of the exchange terms

between traditional companies and new companies of technological base, that began to fill

the world economic space with the coming of biotechnology, robotics, computer science

and the introduction of new materials, as well as forms of life, etc. to the productive

process.

The objective to install, with public financial help and private investment, in places

specially built and/or conditioned, Centers for the Development of Adapted and

Appropriate Technologies to the Sustainability and the Local Productivity, generators of

project groups to be transformed in new competitive companies that will replace old

production units, by means of the grant of consultancy facilities and training in managerial

technical, productive, industrial and commercial environments necessary for the

transformation of projects in competitive companies at a national and international levels.

Likewise, it is about granting facilities with common services of administration and

office as well as areas and technological services communally profitable. Everything with

the intention of reducing the capital necessities in the phase of outburst of the projects of


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technological development and of the companies and of improving the probabilities of their

survival, guaranteeing from the mere beginning a really competitive performance.

The saving possibi li ty for the useof services and consultantship on the part of

science centers and technology, as well as companies of investigation and development,

located in the global Andean region represents a fundamental element that local and

regional offer should have for the generation of projects of technological innovation and of

technologically guided companies.

The possibility of cooperation and communication with other facilities dedicated to

the investigation, consultantship services and tutorship and of other regional organizations

is of great importance. It is equally important the advantage of being able to have

permanent services of technological transfer of universities and local technological

institutes that act as grantors of technology.

There are in Venezuela several areas that present these characteristics and some of them

are already organized to be offered in a systematic way. Other areas have characteristics

and different natural vocations, referred to such productive branches as: mining, agriculture

and tourism, which are the most common in the country, but equally, they are in conditions

of offering comparative advantages to motorize for their own profit this project. In fact, the

case that occupies us in this project is the Andean and Caribbean Region of our country,

which possesses particular conditions and potentialities. Locations: the Andean Highlands

(Chachopo, Mrida) and Northeastern Coast of the Caribbean (Unare, Anzotegui)

Independently from the area type and from the composition of the technological base of

the Center and to which companies projected to incubate are guided , fundamentally it will

always be necessary, in parallel, to have a group of input and service companies to the

first ones, less technologically developed but generators of an employment rate that will

grow in proportion from 3 to 1.

This will not only contribute to make more efficient the future companies produced in

the incubator, when providing them of the inputs required in quantity and adapted

opportunity, but it will propitiate the productive diversification and it will enlarge the

spectrum of the work market of the area, which is necessary to facilitate the diversified

insert from the inhabitants to the new economic structure that will be created having as

primary driver element; this project of Center of Innovation and of its Incubator.


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Objectives

To generate new appropriate technologies and adapted to the increment of the local

productivity and the economic diversification of the areas of the Venezuelan Andean

highlands and Northeastern Coast of the Caribbean, respecting the ecological balance

and the local cultural identity.

To generate new companies of technological base and of intermediate technology, by

means of the creation and setting in march of a new competitive womb of managerial

development, with the exploitation of the local, private and public potential, for

benefit of the own town and the area.

To reside the new companies mainly in the same gestation area, according to the Plan

formulated by the Governorship of the Municipality for the Integrated Development,

in order to induce and to take advantage of their multiplier effect to elevate the local

GDP

To assist with the technological developments that there are generated, to the rest of

the areas of Andean highlands and Northeastern Coast of the Caribbean.

Basic requirements of the Center of Innovat ion

In fact, the services that will be organized to assist the Center of Technological

Innovation, of global Andean projection, will be resulting from a group of efforts of diverse

nature and origin, of those which the Plan of Integrated Development, will constitute an

initial and fundamental device. The rest of the services will be promoted through the

universities that compose the academic support of the local NGO.

Strategically this will be projected this way, so that the Center of Innovation can be

developed, it will require, besides the internal integral urbanism and integrated to the

closely crisscross area to which it belongs that these services exist in quantity and enough

quality, as so that they attract the permanent or temporary settlement of professionals and

investigators that will guarantee the connection to the centers of production of knowledge

and nets of the universities.

In this sense, the project of Center of Innovation will be conformed, for a group of

modules of crisscross but independent services, which will be able to constitute, in turn,

research and development companies in its respective field.


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Device of Financing

Implies connecting in parallel the Plan of Local Integrated Development with a

financing strategy that involves national private capital and the funds of promotion of the

Venezuelan State. The strategy consists in:

Creating a Fund of Promotion of Companies of Technological Base, with the help of

pertinent national and multilateral entities.

Creating a financing program (like Grants) for the future managers and its projects that

will cover a working place for two years in the incubator.

Creating a program of reception of complementary national investment for the

construction and setting in march of the Center of Technological Innovation with their

incubator.

The locations of the Centers are: the Andean Highlands (Chachopo, Mrida) and

Northeastern Coast of the Caribbean (Unare, Anzotegui). As for the regions Target, they

can be described in the following way:

The total area of the Caribbean Sea is about 2,500,000 sq km (965,000 sq mi). Most

Caribbean nations remain overly reliant on tourism and a few exports (such as

bauxite, sugar, and bananas) and depend heavily on imported food and fuel. Recentefforts to improve and diversify the fragile economy of the region include the

founding of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States in 1981 and creation of

the Association of Caribbean States in 1994.


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The Andes constitute one of the world's major mountain systems and form the

backbone of South America. Paralleling the Pacific coast of the continent, they

extend north about 7,250 km (4,500 mi) from Cape Horn at the tip of Tierra del

Fuegoto the Caribbean coast of Colombia and Venezuela. They form one of the

longest uninterrupted high barriers of the world. Subsistence agriculture based on

corn, wheat, potatoes, and grazing predominates in the tierra friaand subtropical

crops--sugar, rice, and, in Colombia especially, coffee--in the tierra templada.

Industry, although of increasing importance, focuses primarily on supplying basic

manufactures for local consumption. The heavily mineralized Andes, long mined

for gold and silver, are now more valued for copper and tin, along with smaller

amounts of lead, zinc, and antimony. Colombia and Peru produce small amounts of

coal for local use. Snowcapped peaks are an additional source of irrigation water as

well as attractions for the tourist industry.


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Nevertheless, both regions present a great populational expansion and some necessities of

adapted technologies and appropriate to the necessities of the local productive development

that are not covered by the technologies designed in non tropical countries. For those

projects international partners are looked for, as much in technology as in investment.


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Suggested literature

Aoyama, Yuko 1996.Local Economic Revitalization Or National Industrial Growth?. University ofCalifornia at Berkeley, USA. Vol 8, No 1 January Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies. TokyoInternational University, Japan.

Briceo, Miguel Angel 1997. Die venezuelanische Schildkrte. Metaphern des Bankrotts einesNationalstaates. Journal sthetik und Kommunikation. Heft 93, Jahrgang 25, Oktober, Berlin.

Karen Seashore Louis; David Blumenthal; Michael E. Gluck; Michael A. Soto. Empresarios en la academia:una exploracin de conductas entre cientficos de dedicacin exclusiva. Administrative Science Quarterly,March 1989 v34 n1 p110(22). Expanded Academic ASAP Int'l Ed.[http://web7.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/992/997/55565360w3/purl=rc1_EIM_0_A7217498&dyn=13!xrn_36_0_A7217498?sw_aep=consejow]

Tim Turpin; Sam Garrett-Jones; Nicole Rankin. Bricoleurs y jinetes de las fronteras: gerenciandoinvestigacin bsica y redes de conocimiento de innovacin. R & D Management, Julio 1996 v26 n3

p267(16). Expanded Academic ASAP Int'l Ed.[http://web7.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/992/997/55565360w3/purl=rc1_EIM_0_A18634971&dyn=

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Richard Florida. El papel de la universidad: desplegar talento, no tecnologa. Mark Issues in Science andTechnology, Summer 1999 v15 i4 p67(7). Expanded Academic ASAP Int'l Ed.[http://web5.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/267/803/35791025w3/purl=rc1_EIM_0_A55427160&dyn=40!xrn_2_0_A55427160?sw_aep=consejow]

James Steve Counelis. Hacia los estudios empricos en tica universitaria: un nuevo papel para lainvestigacin institucional. Journal of Higher Education, Jan-Feb 1993 v64 n1 p74(19). Expanded AcademicASAP Int'l Ed.[http://web7.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/992/997/55565360w3/purl=rc1_EIM_0_A13857749&dyn=13!xrn_31_0_A13857749?sw_aep=consejow]
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Viable technologies for Sustainability and Local Integrated Development, Tech/SUDIL