Pulverized Innovation

In the last years, big innovation centers have emerged around my country, Brazil. They are: business incubators, technology parks, innovation poles and business accelerators.

It is very interesting to observe all that movement, because with that, there is the possibility of creating new technology and supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem in all regions of the country. But what makes me wonder is that many times those organizations are built only to create new jobs, where only the employees of the organization itself receive the benefits.

I have seen incubators that had forgotten their reason of existing, putting aside the main characters, the entrepreneurs.

It gives the impression that a market around the entrepreneur has been created, where there are few organizations really concerned with leveraging the entrepreneurs business. The large majority wants to make money with the entrepreneurs dreams.

With the lack of entrepreneurial culture in all ecosystem, the entrepreneur is not going to find institutions or people that are willing to take the risks together. Then a question kept hammering my head: does that happen because of lack of basic legal knowledge or because no one wants to work on projects that have long term investment return?

It is worth to remember that there are few people that know or are willing to work for stock options or phantom stocks. But again, is it because of lack of knowledge?

The fact is that I don’t see any serious macro work being developed in those big organizations that have the purpose of helping entrepreneurs business get to the market. Is that lack of vision?

Now, imagine that you think it is going to make a huge difference to put your fabulous project in a business incubator. You better know that you will have to pay for the submission and, if selected, you will have to pay monthly to stay incubated. And see that that amount is not that different from a commercial rent in a good localization.

In my wanderings, I’ve even seen business accelerators that instead of injecting capital, they were focusing on selling courses to the “accelerated” ones. Of course it is good to upgrade your knowledge, but I think it is interesting to make the points clear. It is not nice to disguise yourself as accelerator to sell courses.

Is it interesting to spread that format around the country?

If that model of ours reveal and leverage businesses, it will have reached the main goal of generate wealth and employments.

One interesting observation to make is that USA also have many initiatives that support entrepreneurs around its country. Even Miami is trying to develop its entrepreneurial ecosystem now. But no matter how many local initiatives keep appearing, the big magic only happen in Silicon Valley and NY.

Will we be a big success case and be able to develop innovations in different parts of our country?

I stay with that question in mind and what I have left is to keep up with what is going on and hope that we have more and more serious initiatives that support the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

:: Send your comments! It is a pleasure to answer them.