Helping Strengthen Innovation Ecosystem in Mendoza with National University of Cuyo

As part of an online event, the Innovation Area of the National University of Cuyo was launched this Friday in Mendoza. The new science and technology area seeks to articulate academia, the private and public sectors, highlighting the value of scientific and innovative capacities to solve the problems of the socio-productive sector.

The innovation unit aims to promote and strengthen collaborative work networks to support companies, entrepreneurship and applied research projects, with the purpose of boosting competitiveness and productivity through the acceleration of innovation and technological sustainability. Based on this collaboration role, UNCUYO seeks to capitalize on research and development projects that underpin knowledge transfer processes, with a view to enhancing the installed capacity in the university, the province of Mendoza and the region. Thus, the University will bolster the synergy between the technological scientific world and the productive private world, promoting its role as a transformative social stakeholder. The Innovation area is also integrated into an ecosystem of national and international research centers and support institutions, while fostering community participation as an active social stakeholder.

“CAF's main goal is to strengthen innovation ecosystems in the region, mainly partnerships and collaboration channels between the productive sector, academia and the public sector. The creation of this Innovation Unit seeks not only to create innovation management capabilities in each of the participants and entities, but also to develop projects with strategic and innovative impact, which can respond to the needs or opportunities in their environment, from a multidisciplinary approach and working collaboratively, with a co-creation vision since the beginning of the process,” said Santiago Rojas, CAF representative in Argentina.

The creation of the Innovation Area at the National University of Cuyo is part of the Non-Refundable Technical Cooperation Agreement signed between CAF and the University on March 15, 2020. Along with this launch, the National University of Cuyo also opened the call “Resolution of Business Challenges” for the execution of innovation projects, for 4,000,000 pesos, in an attempt to foster contributions from other sectors involved (companies, groups of local companies or other social sectors). Based on the identification of real problems of stakeholders in the socio-productive environment, researchers are called to develop proposals for direct application solutions, based on their technological scientific knowledge.