los Consorcio de Políticas de Innovación Transformativa (TIPC) has launched a new Hub de América Latina, which brings together ten leading institutions from Colombia, Chile and Mexico.
The Hub will seek to address the significant challenges facing Latin American countries, such as social inclusion and environmental degradation, by developing a new frame of science and technology policy. This will help to improve the quality of policymaking and more effectively support processes of transformative change in the region.
Dr. Matias Ramirez, Senior Lecturer at the Science Policy Research Unit, will be working closely with the Latin American Hub as part of its executive leadership team. Dr Ramirez said:
This is an incredibly exciting international research collaboration. We will be working with the Latin American institutions in projects that include health, food and regional sustainability to develop a methodology that can enhance thinking and practices related to systems transformation.
The Hub’s first event – a webinar on the topic of the “Three frames of innovation policy” – brought together close to a hundred researchers and policymakers. The second webinar on May 19th attracted close to 130 participants and discussed a proposal made by the TIPC team to the newly established Colombian Ministry of Science and Technology to adopt a national programme on experimentation for transformation.
Over the next 18 months the Latin American Hub will set up a mobile transformation lab, engage with HUB members to conduct experimental policy engagements and produce a book to capture insights into transformative innovation policy in the Latin American context.
The Latin American Hub is coordinated by the Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana in Colombia. The other members of the hub include Universidad del Rosario, el Centro de Ciencia y Tecnología de Antioquia, Instituto Nacional de Cancerología, Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre Desarrollo – CIDER de la Universidad de los Andes, Institución Universitaria ITM, Universidad del Valle, Universidad Iberoamericana de México, El Tecnológico de Monterrey and Universidad de Talca in Chile.
The Latin American Hub represents another step towards TIPC’s overarching ambition to see the widespread adoption of new transformative innovation policies and practices in different countries.