On the 8th of May it was held the II session of Forum RedEmprendia with the video-conference “Analysis of Technology Gaps”. Doctor Sergio M. Alcocer Martínez de Castro, coordinator of Innovation and Development of the UNAM, and the Engineer David Guillen Valencia, leader of the Project of technology based companies from the Open University of Distance Education of UNAM in Mexico were the lectures. They presented a tool of best practices to identify entrepreneur projects that accessed to the technology incubator of the UNAM.
The video-conference had the participation and assistance of several high education institutions of Latin America, among them, the University of Antioquia, the University of Buenos Aires, the University of Cantabria, the University Estadual of Campinas, the Scientific Park of Madrid, the Operative Unit of RedEmprendia and the Virtual Observatory for Technology Transfer (OVTT) of the University of Alicante.
A complete panorama
The methodology of the UNAM pretends to offer a “complete panorama” of the technology analysed, describing the technical appearances and the current and future applications, as well as the normative framework that would affect the development or commercial implantation. Later to this analysis a market study and a financial analysis is done to determine the investment that the business project would need.
Among the multiple sources of information employed in the analysis, David Guillen stood out the importance of the information obtained by patent databases: “if there are similar technologies in the market and also to whom they belong, how and where they were commercialised and who is doing research on the subject”.
The aim of this analysis is to identify entrepreneur projects, possible competitors, potential collaborators and the degree of innovation: “we analyse the technology to identify those elements that give us competitiveness and attain innovation”, concluded.
Successful Stories
During the presentation, David Guillén referred to two examples of incubated projects in the UNAM, to which the methodology of “analysis of technology gaps” were applied. The first is a system of residual water treatment, through a anaerobic process. Nowadays, the company is incubated in InnovaUNAM and has built 25 plants of treatment in Mexico and the past year started in Nicaragua the construction of a new plant .
On the other hand, the analysis of technology gaps served also to identify applications with commercial potential, such as a protocol for wireless communication processes developed by a research group of the UNAM. This technology of multiple uses is employed already to control air conditioning systems in hotels and catering industry.
Source: RedEmprendia