(Expansion) – The importance of innovation as a factor of economic growth for a country is related to the impact that this innovation has on technical progress, hence one of the most relevant challenges facing Mexico, to challenge the consistent technological dependence What we have from abroad is the scant dissemination and use of innovations.
In the country today we do not see greater economic growth as a result of innovation. We do not see an increase in economic productivity leading to an increase in wages.
The country, despite the relatively satisfactory results of academic and research institutions in terms of scientific production and training of highly qualified personnel, has not been able to take advantage of its scientific and technological advances to increase productivity levels, which are persistently low in all sectors, mainly due to an export structure concentrated in the primary and extractive sectors with a low degree of sophistication.
However, this reality is at odds with the exponential growth of new technologies, which are emerging with increasing force and in more sectors of economic activity.
To create prosperity, not only must new technologies be launched, they must also be widely disseminated and implemented throughout the production and service chains, which sustain the economy of a country. In this, Mexico and its companies must have and acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to adopt and scale these technologies.
It is necessary to face this vicious circle of poor quality jobs, deficient social protection and volatile income and move towards economies based on knowledge and guided by innovation, this implies expanding activities with high added value to all sectors.
The country’s industrial policy must ensure that the benefits of innovation are not only concentrated in some companies, since it is clear that the vast majority are being left behind. For this reason, it is convenient that the institutions of the Mexican state adopt an “entrepreneurial” role that assumes certain risks that can bring great social benefits derived from expanding the diffusion of innovation in all areas of citizens’ daily lives.
This would ensure that it is helping to reduce inequalities between wealthy sectors of the population, with access to these technologies, and sectors of the population excluded from the process of adopting these innovations.
Clearly, the process of dissemination, and use of innovations in all population sectors, would bring technological progress, which will also have effects on the organization of work and the way in which companies should redesign their processes to take advantage of the benefits of the technological change, and thus allow the inclusion of workers who in the current scheme live with lower wages or more precarious conditions, due to the lack of skills and knowledge that allow them to be part of the process of adopting technological change.
Companies must risk even more and continue to bet on innovation, where in countries like Mexico the phenomenon called “death valley” continues to be present, in which not only technology startups are found, but also lives in the science and technology system, where research ends, papers are published and academics have little incentive to continue working, so technological development is still at a very early stage and not proven in the market, in which both investors such as large corporations are reluctant to fund their development until further evidence of possible commercial success is demonstrated.
Excellence is well established, in Mexico, there are good business schools, large research centers, universities and exceptional companies such as Helvex, Rotoplas, Estafeta, Bimbo, Cemex, Femsa, Grupo Lala, Grupo Financijero Banorte, among others that ” even if they are leaders now, they have no guarantees of future success. ” Everything happens to continue innovating.
Not only is it necessary to promote the creation of greater knowledge, it requires a boost from the State to initiate a process of reindustrialization, based on a policy of technological change and to deepen the university-business relationship, where the development of inputs of local content decreases technological dependence and increase levels of competitiveness.
Those sectors that already innovate should be considered, to stimulate a rapprochement between these and the local university technological offer, in such a way that they begin and / or deepen a link of technological cooperation.
Most of the promising scientific and technological developments for the market do not have the resources to finance the early stages in the validation of their commercial impacts. This reality, among other causes, is due to the high aversion to risk of the economic system, which is aggravated by a weak development of a venture capital industry to invest in these stages.
Universities play a leading role in the dissemination and use of innovations; In countries such as Singapore or Germany, according to the WEF 2020 index they occupy positions 2 and 3, they have managed to establish close cooperative relationships in innovation with universities, the government, the private sector and society. Being one of the supporting factors the application and transformation of scientific and technological knowledge into real solutions to specific problems of society.
Editor’s note: Juan Alberto González Piñón is the director of Spark UP and an academic at the Faculty of Business at the Universidad Panamericana. Follow him on. The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author.
