The Forum "Productivity and innovation challenges of small and medium enterprises in Latin America: How the cluster networks and other organizations can help overcome existing barriers?" organized by the Eurochile Business Foundation and the Confederation of Commerce of Chile was held in the Chilean Pavilion Auditorium at Expo Milano 2015 in the afternoon of Thursday, June 11. The meeting was chaired and moderated by Vincente Caruz (President of the Eurochile Business Foundation) and attended by Carlos Eduardo Abigaodi (International Director of the National Confederation of Industries of Brazil) Filippo Pasquet (Manager of EEN for Latin America), Augusto Aninat (Director of ProChile Milan), Fabrizio Trigila (Project Manager of the Parco Tecnologico Padano), Renaud Guillonet (program coordinator, project manager of the EU-LAC Foundation "competitiveness clusters"), Paolo Baldan (Senior Advisor Eurochambres) and Andrea Bonalumi (Managing Director of Promos Milano).

 

Improve technology to increase productivity

 

"Today we need to bring concrete ideas forward that allow us to face the challenges of technology, to improve productivity" stated President Caruz, while Director Abigaodi stressed the importance for companies to learn how to best connect the offer of structures with the demand of big and small enterprises. In fact, small and medium-sized enterprises in Latin America face great obstacles, like the development barriers in innovation processes, barriers in the identification of new technologies and their applications, barriers associated with the qualification of human resources and those related to access to finance. Huge efforts and the ability to think of new forms of organization and cooperation is necessary to overcome these barriers successfully.