According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Global Innovation Index 2019, no country in Latin America occupies the top 25 places when it comes to innovation. The first to appear in the ranking is Chile, in 51st place, followed by Costa Rica, in 55th place, and Mexico, in 56th place. Colombia, for its part, occupies 67th place.
But what are these countries doing to improve in terms of innovation and creativity? For experts such as Professor Henry Chesbrough, PhD in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business, the answer is collaborative innovation, a concept that refers to the joint work between organizations, clients and employees.
In essence, it is the search for new knowledge to boost innovation through the creative capabilities of a group of people around a specific need. Diana Gaviria, CEO of Connect Bogotá Region, stated in an article published by Dinero Magazine in July 2019 that more than 200 companies in Latin America are working with 2.000 startups to generate new valuable products and services.
This trend in the region is a reflection of co-creation in the world: Gaviria takes up a study by Corporate Venturing and Open Innovation Latam (CVL), which shows that 68% of the top 100 companies of the Forbes Global 500 are collaborating with entrepreneurs who, generally, have new ideas and potential in observing what surrounds them.
What is clear is that conscious observation of the beauty of what surrounds the creative, whether from an individual or collective perspective, allows human groups to grow and innovate.
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