From the role of government, Carolina Gutiérrez is a witness and part of Uruguay’s position on all issues related to innovation.
“The government invested a lot in digitization, in tax benefits that favored the growth of the software industry,” said the director of the Uruguay Innovation Hub of the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining (MIEM).
In interview with Coffee & BusinessGutierrez recalled that Uruguay has positioned itself as the number one exporter of software per capita in Latin America thanks to many of these measures that have been taken in recent years.
“We see innovation in a broad sense”, he pointed out and remarked that the government perspective linked to innovation involves areas that go beyond the technological.
“What is wanted to be promoted today has to do with biotechnology and also with capitalizing on everything that has been done in terms of renewable energy and sustainability, adding a layer of technology to that,” remarked the MIEM referent and highlighted that “The foundations are laid.”
Today, work is being done on the key issue of strengthening a public-private partnership. In this framework, Gutiérrez highlighted the installation of the first Microsoft artificial intelligence laboratory for Latin America in Uruguay and NewLabs, an organization that does open innovation in New York and that has also settled in the country.
The rules of the game
“There are certain rules of the game that should be re-examined because they have not been reviewed for a long time to give a better context to the development of innovation”, indicated the MIEM referent and pointed out that the oldest regulations “have a hard time framing innovation” .
Currently, the regulatory issues that are being reviewed are focused on facilitating business, accelerating the installation of companies, access to talent or some tax benefits that involve the most mature stages of innovation, and not the initial ones. “We are seeing how we can make Uruguay more agile”, reflected Gutiérrez and remarked that it is not just about attracting investment, but that this must be complemented with an agile environment.
Scale as a benefit
Historically, the fact that Uruguay is a small country has been considered a stone in the shoe of those who seek to dream big. However, for Gutierrez, this scale allows you to make faster changes, understand the problems and study them with a regional projection. “Uruguay has to think about all its measures in regional terms, that is the way to acquire scale and also the way to present Uruguay as an ideal place to test ideas that are later projected to the region,” he stressed.
Along the same lines, he highlighted the closeness between the different government actors, academia, large companies, startups and accelerators or State agencies that facilitate this agility. “In this we have an advantage over larger countries in the region and not to mention the great appeal that Uruguay has in terms of political stability compared to the rest,” he said, adding: “from the government we are aware that we have to capitalize on it because it is not a competitive advantage that will last forever; that window of opportunity must be seized”.
Taking quick action and achieving interaction between the different actors in the sector is key to this capitalization projected by the MIEM. “We are always measuring the pulse of what the private sector demands,” Gutiérrez remarked. His main requirement, he assured, is in talent management, a problem that is repeated in different countries of the world and from which Uruguay is not exempt.
In his perspective, Uruguay has become a very attractive pole for large companies. “We want to expand the value chain that is installed in Uruguay, that is not only focused on services, but that we can eventually generate the conditions for manufacturing, research and development. We are aware that for this to happen, we must create an innovation ecosystem”, concluded Gutiérrez.
The director of the Innovation Hub was one of the speakers at Technology and New Businesses, the first summit of El Observador Eventos supported by Zonamerica and Latin SecuritiesQuantik, Phoenician, Andersen and Sunpartners.
