On Friday, September 16th, the Achieving Sustainable Partnerships for Innovation, Research and Entrepreneurship (ASPIRE) Project conducted a training event for UVG faculty during Faculty Training Week. This training is meant to advance one of ASPIRE’s primary objectives – building the skills of UVG faculty, researchers, and staff to provide world-class training in research and innovation to the benefit of Guatemala’s innovation ecosystem.

Elizabeth Hoffecker, one of the Co-Principal Investigators for the ASPIRE Project at MIT, delivered a training workshop entitled “How to contribute to the Local Innovation Ecosystem from the university role”. During the training, Hoffecker presented a model created by the MIT Local Innovation Group. Within the model, Hoffecker illustrates the usefulness of understanding the use of diagnosing and analyzing the strengths and opportunities available within the local innovation ecosystem. During the training session, 30 participants were instructed to reflect on the role that universities, and other institutions play in developing this nuanced concept .

During the workshop, Hoffecker defined the local innovation ecosystem as “a community of interconnected participants, based in a specific place, who interact in order to create innovation and support innovation processes. This is carried out with  the resources, infrastructure, and right environment, which allows to develop and spread better ways of doing things.”

In addition, Hoffecker stressed that, traditionally in this area, the role of a university is to generate new knowledge, processes, and techniques, as well as to train and educate the future workforce. However, this role is expanding. Academia now fulfills functions such as producing new generations of entrepreneurs, providing technical assistance in different spaces, and providing the infrastructure for the innovation ecosystem.

Some successful strategies that MIT has used to expand its role as an academic institution are:

• strengthening the academic curriculum, incorporating successful entrepreneurs and investors into teaching
• acilitating opportunities for students to work in start-ups and ventures
• and making entrepreneurship topics accessible to other schools beyond the Business School.

Likewise, Hoffecker mentioned that MIT promotes a multidisciplinary team approach, creating spaces for teachers and students from different disciplines to work together on entrepreneurial projects.

At the conclusion of the training participants were allowed to discuss and strategize about the following topics:

• Strategies to address these new concepts which could result in positive advancements for UVG
• The essential role that alumni play as key actors
• The benefit of including representatives from various disciplines and their unique perspectives to improve and develop processes

This workshop is an excellent starting point for UVG faculty. Continued discourse around these topics will result in supporting UVG’s faculty, researchers, and other community members in adopting principles necessary for successful development of a stronger innovation ecosystem in Guatemala. .

About the ASPIRE Project

The Achieving Sustainable Partnerships for Innovation, Research and Entrepreneurship (ASPIRE) Project is a five-year, $15 million project funded by USAID and implemented by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG) and the Guatemalan Exporters Association (AGEXPORT). The goal of the project is to create a world-class, replicable model for how Latin American universities and their collaborators can respond to local and regional development needs. The project implements a collaborative approach to research, teaching, innovation, entrepreneurship and tech transfer, based on the combination of local assets and knowledge with MIT’s experience in the innovation ecosystem.