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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
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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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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
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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]
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