Emerging industry-university trends, challenges, and interventions for Latin America

Ever since the dawn of the last decade, Latin America has witnessed both an existing, entrenched, consensus on the need for changing the role of universities, as well as the incremental demand for knowledgeable-high-tech skilled labor in emerging industries. Such a role has arrived in addition to the standard roles of advanced education and research, to one more where extension, engagement, and entrepreneurship contributes to regional economic development. Hence, these institutions are compelled to increase, develop, and raise their potential in terms of training qualified, “knowledge workers” thus creating imminent direct innovation and scientific capacity building. Since from a technological standpoint, sustainability and abundance will never occur in a profit system, for it simply goes against the very nature of its structure, designed to maintain and promote innovative scarcity, this dyadic relationship of industry university relations must seek new alternative resources, where the end result is a competitive indigenous technology that supports a resource-based economy. To accomplish it requires access to technological and financial resources, diverse capabilities, and markets. However, since rarely are all these available in one place or embodied in one person or organization, the role of networks in disseminating information and ideas and allowing access to such resources, has, consequently, become of critical importance. So much so, it could be argued, that the viability of network connections has become a critical determinant of economic competitiveness. In developing regions, the sphere of competencies is likely to be supplementary from the knowledge frontier, and as a result the collection of considered options is narrow. Both in developed and developing countries, industries have only inadequate knowledge of relevant technological options, and research demonstrates that they generally look for new solutions around their existing competencies (Fagerberg and Godinho 2005). In order to steer clear of being encapsulated on a second-rate development path, technologically lagging countries are in particular need of institutional strengthening that enhances access to cutting-edge technologies, supply needed skills and strengthen local innovation networks. For the most part, Latin American universities are well positioned to meet this challenge to the extent they are at the knowledge frontier and may be trained to be responsive to the needs of firms, but compose a major portion of all national innovation systems acting as primary employers of researchers, and receiving the bulk of public subsidies for research. There is an unprecedented potential for putting this research capacity to uses never before witnessed by their industrial counterparts, who remain suspicious of their academic counterparts. Technology-based industries could benefit prominently from the university education and research interaction. Specifically, the disparity between the long-term horizon of institution, infrastructure, and capacity building, and the short term and quickly shifting challenges of new technological paradigms, does provide the perfect setting. This paper considers trends, challenges, and a possible intervention for Latin American universities and their relations with industry, as well as policy options available for fostering their contributions to overall development.