The International Symposium "Insyspo: the challenges of catching up economic and technological in emerging countries" promoted by the Department of Scientific and Technological Policy (DPCT), the Institute of Geosciences (IG) at Unicamp and the São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Fapesp). The event marks the end of a five-year work cycle of the InSySPo (acronym in English for Innovation Systems, Strategies and Policies), a São Paulo Excellence Chair (Spec) program, financed by Fapesp, whose objective is to encourage the arrival of cutting-edge researchers from abroad to create research centers at universities in São Paulo. The opening of the event took place in the DGA auditorium and was attended by the Vice-Rector of International Relations, Mariano Laplane.
“The idea of Spec is to intensify the University’s openness to the international community, in the case of InSySPo, in the field of scientific and technological policy. What we hope here, in addition to intellectual discussion on these important topics, is to influence decision makers”, said Nicholas Vonortas, professor at George Washington University (USA) and researcher responsible for InSySPo, at Unicamp. According to him, InSySPo involved an excellent group of researchers and became an international reference in the area. “They know we are here, they want to come and they ask us to participate in projects. I recently spent two and a half months in China, teaching in Beijing, and everyone there had already heard about the Campinas group,” he said.
For Sérgio Salles, director of DPCT and one of INSySPo's main researchers, the program meant a change of level, not only for the department, but for several other Brazilian institutions involved. “In these five years, the project has created collaboration networks with several universities and departments in the country, in Latin America, Europe, the United States and Korea. A network was created, in the spirit of the São Paulo Excellence Chair program, to bring people active in their areas of knowledge and with many international connections to, precisely, take this leap”, he stated.
The focus of this edition of the event is on closing the economic and technological gaps that separate emerging countries and developed countries. “In fact, this is the original theme of our department. The DPCT was born with this theme, of Latin American economic, social and technological development. Now, it is being resumed with another perspective, involving people from all over the world”, said Salles.
According to Vonortas, Brazil did very well in closing part of this gap, but it stagnated. “Brazil is one of the candidate countries for closing this gap, but it may have fallen, in recent years, into this middle income trap (middle income trap). It's not getting worse, it's just stopped closing the gap. Unfortunately, there are no recipes in this area”, he pointed out.
For Salles, the leap necessary to close this gap is on the long-term Brazilian horizon. “I think it still takes a long time. Behind this, we need a social commitment from various segments of society, in agreeing that this leap is necessary for the country. I have no doubt that it is. But, between talking and happening, there is a certain distance”, she relativized.
In the opening lecture, Keun Lee, professor at Seoul National University, spoke about the need for a leap forward in order to bridge economic and technological gaps. “Overtaking cannot be achieved by imitation,” he emphasized, bringing up the Korean example. For Tilman Altenburg, from the German Institute for Development Policy, it would be necessary to rethink the concept of economic development, taking into account the sustainability of the planet. Check out the programming complete.
Next steps for InSySPo
According to Vonortas, an even larger project was submitted to Fapesp, in order to continue InSySPo. Among the novelties of the new project, the professor highlighted a strong component of big data (large volumes of digital data). “For the next period, we intend to look at the influence of big data in political decision-making in this area. So we will have large databases and people who know how to manipulate data, statistics, econometrics,” he reported. According to him, USP should become a partner in this phase of the project.
