Know Hub Chile opinion column: Uncertainty and progress toward a knowledge-based economy and society

Tuesday, January 24, marks a sad national anniversary. An event that the passage of time has turned into a statistic, but that literally brought down much of the country. That day marks 84 years since the 1939 Chillán earthquake, which earned a place on the contested podium of earthquakes in our country for having the highest death toll: twenty-four thousand people.

Source: Open Beauchef

However, all those who lost their lives that day, together with the physical devastation caused, did not merely remain a sad and shocking memory for decades. The effects of that earthquake generated enough political capital for President Pedro Aguirre Cerda to finally create the Corporación de Fomento de la Producción (CORFO). This public institution was born not only to help those affected and to promote national productive capacity; it was also an initial pillar of a new model of economic development, showing that catastrophes, and the uncertainty they create, can and should be a source of personal, professional and institutional renewal.

More than eighty years have passed since that event mobilized the entire country. A warning about the constant uncertainty that nature hands us. An experience that is palpable even when trying to review the main challenges of this year for the national innovation ecosystem, an exercise that can quickly become a repetition of the gaps diagnosed a couple of decades ago, plus a brief review of recent progress. This column will be no exception. However, we will focus on one element in particular: uncertainty.

To mention just two examples, it is uncertainty, in the form of commercial and technological risk, that is responsible for the low level of private investment in R&D&I. And in the form of mistrust, uncertainty is present in the ever-fragile relationships between knowledge-generating institutions and industry.

A general projection of the events expected for 2023 suggests that this will be precisely the great challenge of the year: getting each player in the ecosystem to keep doing what they do best, each from their own perspective, to advance in consolidating and expanding relationships of trust, private investment in R&D, collaborative work and support for innovative entrepreneurship.

Uncertainty acts as a brake. It is a warning to be cautious in the face of the unknown, which halts decisions, investments and projects, both personal and institutional. All while waiting for the waters to calm so we can foresee and anticipate results. However, for those of us who work closely with innovation, and particularly with entrepreneurship, risk and uncertainty are no strangers to a game in which the sudden moves of other players and changes on the board are already part of everyday life.

Even so, this year looks particularly turbulent. Just as we had absorbed the effects of the social unrest and the pandemic, with all their political, economic and social aftershocks, in 2022 we had to add the crisis of the war in Ukraine, which in turn affects our daily lives, creating the perfect breeding ground for inaction and hibernation while waiting for better, calmer times. But it is precisely this inaction that we must fight, avoiding stagnation and delays in decision-making, which become all the more urgent precisely because we are in times of crisis.

The world of entrepreneurship, and especially of science-based startups (EBCTs), can teach us a lesson. For them, standing still is not an option, and their ability to adapt to uncertainty and their resilience to change should serve as an example to the rest of the players in the ecosystem. Just as the 1939 earthquake and its sad record led to the creation of one of the ecosystem’s fundamental players, we hope that this “seismic” 2023 will catalyze significant progress toward building a knowledge-based economy and society.