The caricature indicates that, among so many ancestral cracks, there is that of the scientist locked in his laboratory and the business world repeating extractive models with no connection between them. But it is not what it might seem.
“In Argentina, truncated processes of appropriation of the benefits of knowledge by the entire community proliferate. This is so because knowledge does not produce spillage automatically and for it to happen and last it is necessary to ‘fan the flame’.a’. Several regions of our country have research, development and innovation capabilities and this is a necessary but not sufficient condition for this process to happen”, he explains. Maria Luz MartiarenaSecretary of Linkage and Innovation of the Balseiro Institute and director of the North Patagonia region of CONICET. Besides, he knows what he’s talking about. She was part of the team that since 2009 organizes the scientific innovation project contest in Argentina for young professionals under 35 years of age. This year it expects to have US$ 50,000 in prizes and 10 finalist teams.
For Martiarena, Ph.D. in Physics who was also an innovator in applications for agricultural machinery, jumping from the academy to the “real world” to advance with a development from research to competitive production, requires accepting and taking risks. “We can model these actions with the model of the trapeze artists, those experts who climb to the heights in the circus and balance on opposite trapezes and amaze us by jumping into the void with the certainty that they will be received by a person who is waiting for them on the other trapeze”, graphic.
The numbers seem to prove him right. In a study of microsoft and the Argentine Association of Private Capital, Entrepreneur and Seed (ARCAP), a non-profit association that aims to promote the development of the sector in the country, during 2021 the 110 transactions that were carried out in the sector involved investments of US$1,337 million of private capital funds. In addition to the volume itself, it is 19.6% more in number of transactions and 18.5% more in funds than what happened before the pandemic, in 2019.”Undertaking from advanced science is not ‘betraying’ the essential task of research, but rather allowing knowledge to be transformed into well-being for thousands or millions of people. Magnetic resonators, insulating materials, hearing aids, and so many other things originally had a brilliant mind… and also someone who risked his capital so that those ideas would not be trapped in a paper”, he maintains. Alice Knightthe director of UCATec (UCA Technological Linkage Unit).
The cases. alexis atem participated in the aforementioned contest in its initial edition, in 2009, with a team made up of three industrial engineers from Mendoza (Leonardo Scollo, Sebastián Pérez and himself) with a project for the mass production of flat solar collectors. The business became energy, a leading company in the country in distributed solar energy. Currently more than 70 people work and it has a network of points of sale in many locations in the country.
It was different for Demian Bellido, a geneticist and doctor of Pharmacy (Virology) who participated in the contest, where he declares his enormous satisfaction because “those of us who come from science can understand and learn the universe of the company, a dynamic and language that is not familiar to us, but from the which we learn a lot”. In their case, the project they had developed on bovine vaccines had already secured financing in a partnership between the company (Vilnovo) and the INTA de Castelar that came onto the market successfully in 2018, but it provided them with contacts and recognition that was vital for future innovations, such as the one they are now developing on new-generation drugs.
For its part, Santiago Romero Ayala is part of the Paraná team (bioengineers, metallurgy specialists and students) that developed LUMI-UV, which in 2020 focused its activity on the disinfection by UVC light of spaces, air and surface of SARS-CoV.2, fungi, viruses and bacteria in general. What was innovative was the development they made through a mobile device that could be transferred to a room to purify it with sensors that activated it automatically.. During this process they tested this technology in INTIwith CONICET scientists from the UNER and with private laboratories, demonstrating a significant drop in microorganisms in the air. After the contest, the enterprise decided to advance in other areas: equipment to avoid the use of pesticides, and with it they won prizes (EUREKA 2022 of San Miguel and Startof the Sadosk FoundationY). “For us, being able to grow from Paraná is a great satisfaction, here 70% of the population is a public employee. We believe that it is the only equation that allows us to develop as a region, produce and provide work”, he concludes.
Finally, in the case of Mark Mammarellafinalist of the contest in 2019 with the project DeepAgro, set out to transform through a selective application of herbicides, had a great growth of the company, achieving a sought-after investment. Although the founding team is technically trained (four electronic engineers and one systems engineer), with the growth of the company they became more professional in management and team management. “In addition, we already had experience in the entrepreneurial world and the IB50K challenge was one of the best experiences we went through, we achieved investment and today we are more than 22 people working at DeepAgro”, he concludes.
A circle that closes, based on scientific knowledge and through applied technology, to transform loose ends into a network that feeds on itself. Always with intensive use of the most valuable capital: the human.
