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ILCE supports the FIRST project towards a Latin American – European Union Future Internet R&D Strategy

FIRST had the chance of interviewing Mr. Marcos Pueyrredón, president of ILCE, the Latin American Institute of e-Commerce. As a specialist in Internet subjects, he gave us a very interesting perspective from Latin America.

1- From ILCE point of view, why do you think that the set up of the Technologies Platforms in LA is important?

Generally, the reason why is that we must take advantage of the improvement achieved in other countries. There is lot of knowledge and work made that is still partially unknown. Furthermore, there is not a good connection between the opportunities that Latin America can offer to Europe and the other way around.

Maybe it is possible to work on a synergic way through the building of associations. However, companies do not have the information and don’t know how to develop associations between different entities neither of the same country or different parts of the region.

2- Could you explain ILCE’s position with respect to R&D?

This question might be answered in two different levels: personal and institutional.

Personally, I consider that companies do not spend as much as required in order to improve the quality of R&D activities.

From the institutional point of view, there is some progress regarding this problem, but not that serious. There are kind of initiatives but much more collaborative work is needed: there is a lot of individual efforts but cooperative efforts are still needed. From ILCE, we are convinced that it is possible to add together the different sources that the companies present and generate a larger supply of R&D resources. In Latin America there is no culture of R&D because there are not institutions promoting it.

Companies that has incorporated the R&D culture have demonstrated that is an investment and a strategic tool inside their activity.

3- Internet is already an essential part of our society, each day more present in our daily life, It has changed our life but it has the potential to transform it even more. We are foreseen a new internet where Immersive, 3D applications will be protagonist. In this new scenario, what is ILCE position and why it would support Latin American-European Union strategy of Research and Development activities?

ILCE has a fundamental stone for the development of the internet and the digital economy. It consists in:

Boost and improve the quality (and quantity) the supply of companies that offer their products and services using the internet. The progression of successful cases of this will increase the joy of the experience form the user side. Nowadays, our focus is this because we believe that the biggest need is the lack of supply at regional level. The main reason for this is that this new channel/tool described is not incorporated with the necessary time and resources to do it.

In this moment, our place to work is the supply because it has a spillover effect. Focusing on the supply is working with all the key actors of the economy that use internet for their work and business. The main objective is encouraging them to do this more frequently and better and create a spillover effect through the rest of the economy.

4- Any message for the members?

We believe that this kind of initiative are very important because they allow to create a know-how about what the region is doing in order to boost each other as a whole.

One of the biggest benefits that internet brought is the networking and community framework creation that it represents. We are using this flag of internet that includes many topics. But the important fact is that we are a community that share interests and this allow us to work together by finding interaction points in which we can go deeper after each interaction between the members of the community.

The important fact today is to walk towards and find this flag that allow all of us to keep on working together with the same objective. If we add all the individual efforts and share them as a group the collective intelligence will emerge. That is the networking power of internet.

We have to be the first to be able to use this power. It is important to highlight the high impact results in the short term of this. It will transform the ideas and make them impact on the society and the economy.

DOCS