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 Within the context of the Conference of the Americas on International Education (CAEI), held in Calgary between October 20-23, the Inter-American Organisation for Higher Education (IOHE) and CLARA signed a collaboration agreement which identifies important actions that the two organisations will jointly undertake in the field of Science, Technology and Innovation.
With the aim of carrying out a number of actions that strengthen the national innovation systems across the region, on October 22 Luis Furlán, President of the CLARA Board, and Raúl Arias Lovillo, President of the IOHE and Vice-Chancellor of the Universidad Veracruzana, with the participation of Patricia Gudiño, General Secretary of IOHE and Carmen Gloria Labbé, CLARA Director of Innovation and Development as witnesses, ratified the alliance that both institutions have had since 2008 through the signature of an Addendum which includes:
- The organisation of meeting spaces for knowledge sharing, which will bring the following actors and purposes together:
- Universities and businesses to establish joint action lines in innovation
- National bodies in charge of public policies and universities to analyse public policies on innovation
- Universities to exchange good practices in the promotion of a culture of entrepreneurship
- Multilateral organisation and universities to identify project lines which promote the strengthening of innovation in Latin America.
- Networks development
- The development of joint projects to identify instruments and actions that support the implementation of public policies related to science, technology and innovation.
 Luis Furlán, President of the CLARA Board, Patricia Gudiño, General Secretary of the IOHE, Raúl Arias Lovillo, President of the IOHE and Vice-Chancellor of the Universidad Veracruzana, and Carmen Gloria Labbé, CLARA Director of Innovation and Development. |
As part of the strategic lines of both regional institutions, the first point of the agreement has to do with the organisation of an Annual Congress on Science, Technology and Innovation which will create a key meeting space among universities, research centers, businesses, and national and international organisms. This is ideal for innovation actors and leaders to establish joint action lines and common development strategies; reflect upon Science, Technology and Innovation policies; exchange knowledge and best practices in the promotion of a culture of entrepreneurship, and develop projects related to e-science and e-collaboration.
The current scenario indicates that Science, Technology and Innovation are a priority to improve competitiveness, and within this context Higher Education institutions are strongly urged to carry out a more competitive research; this is why the strengthening of relations in the field addressed by IOHE and CLARA is fundamental. This is what the UNESCO celebrated following the signature of the Addendum by highlighting that until now there wasn't any organizations or networks that harnessed regional and national actors in innovation, and which are dedicated to supporting Higher Education in Science, Technology and Innovation.
By enhancing the promotion of Science, Technology and Innovation, the development of projects in the region promoted by the agreement, engages both institutions to explore joint and/or complementary ways to procure funding that enables the implementation of specific initiatives (with the Inter-American Development Bank, IADB, and the International Development Research Centre, IDRC, among others) for the university-enterprise articulation, the creation of technology park networks, the training of human resources for technological management, the leverage of innovation indicators and the support to the formulation of the corresponding public policies.
The complementarity between CLARA and IOHE has been efficiently proven since 2008 through the joint development of a project called A Regional Strategy and Interoperability and Management Framework for a Latin American Federated Network of Institutional Scientific Documentation Repositories.
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