Document Actions
CESAR - The enterprise factory: promoting ICT innovation in Brazil
Document Actions
Author : Silvio Lemos Meira
Date added : 2000-09-01
Brief Project Background
project decsriptionWe describe CESAR, a not-for-profit and non-government organisation committed to research, training and consulting on IT for development and innovation in society and, in particular, aimed at increasing the interaction of the industrial and academic sectors in the Northeast of Brazil. The Centre assists academics and young entrepreneurs in turning the product of their research on IT into marketable products and services. CESAR is an initiative of the Federal University of Pernambuco's Centre for Informatics (CIn/UFPE), one of three such excellence centres in Brazil.
CESAR's project development and new enterprise units are situated in Cin/UFPE's Campus. The stimulating and dynamic IT research and development environment of the Centre makes this location ideal for new enterprises to be created and grow: there is a large and consolidated academic basis, with some 40 full time research professors with doctoral degrees in Computer Science carrying out research and development on the state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice in IT; CESAR manages collaborative projects with industry, bringing market demands to the University and transferring knowledge and technology to Industry; undergraduate and postgraduate students are educated in entrepreneurship and stimulated to start up their own firms after finishing their studies.
One of the newly graduated business units is Radix, radix.com.br, one of the top portuguese language internet search engines, now a start-up company funded by USA's Citibank in partnership with Brazil's Opportunity investment bank.
CESAR believes that, to be competitive in the global market place, firms must produce global quality hardware, software and services and this requires a strong research basis on IT. On the other hand, these firms would find it very difficult to grow and become successful in a hostile environment without help from supporting organisations like incubators, innovation centres and science parks. The combination of research and business support found at CESAR has helped various start ups to enter the competitive, global, IT market.
Results
project resultsAfter a long period of economic instability, Brazil is facing the perspective of long term monetary stability and industrial growth. The money invested in the financial market during the period of high inflation rates now looks for investment opportunities in the productive sector. In this context, the IT industry appears as an important alternative for investment for a number of reasons. On the other hand, because the IT industry does not demand large capital investments, it is one of the few alternatives for sustained growth in regions in which manufacturing industry is in decline or does not even exist.
This is the case of the northeast region of Brazil, where the IT industry is a less expensive and ecological complement to manufacturing industry and agriculture. The Centre for Informatics of the Federal University of Pernambuco (CIn-UFPE) has been aware of this potential and has invested for two decades in human resources qualification at graduate and postgraduate levels, getting to be one of the largest academic departments in IT of Brazil. At CIn-UFPE, there are currently some 40 professionals with doctoral degrees doing state-of-the-art research in IT and related areas; besides that, 200 MSc and PhD thesis have been approved in the past 20 years.
To realise the business potential of both human resources and a large research basis, professors associated to CIn-UFPE launched, in 1993, the Recife Centre for Advanced Studies and Systems (CESAR). The Centre is a technology transfer and business innovation enterprise that sets up, manages and executes collaborative projects between industry and university, supports the start up of new software enterprises from graduates and academics, and manages a incubator unit that hosts innovative companies in software, information and IT services.
CESAR is a not-for-profit and non-government organisation committed to research, training and consulting on IT for development and innovation in society and, in particular, aimed at increasing the interaction of the industrial and academic sectors in the Northeast of Brazil. The Centre assists academics and young entrepreneurs in turning the product of their research on IT into marketable products and services.
Five small companies were created with direct investment of CESAR and six business units are now harboured within the Centre, with a view of becoming new business within a year. The new-born companies have grossed more than a million dollars in the last three years and together they created more than a hundred jobs in the sector. Nowadays, around 250 people work for and with CESAR on the development of high technology services and products. CESAR stimulate the entrepreneurship between its workers and the students of the CIn-UFPE. It means a huge change on the way people see jobs. This way, CESAR is raising a new generation of entrepreneurs that is being taught to make companies and not look for jobs.
One of the newly graduated business units is Radix, radix.com.br, one of the top portuguese language internet search engines, now a start-up company funded by USA's Citibank in partnership with Brazil's Opportunity investment bank.
The development of high technology projects is also supported by a high qualified team, composed by a group of more than a hundred people among professionals and students from CIn-UFPE, specialised in the areas that interests CESAR, such as: Web Based Information Systems and Applications; Software Engineering and Quality; Development Methodologies, Methods, Tools and Environments; Database management systems and application development; Electronic commerce and applications ; Information Systems and Web Interface Design; Internet, Networks, Distributed System development and applications.
Furthermore, Cin/UFPE can be seen as CESAR's research, development and human capital basis; the department employs circa 40 PhDs in Computer Science and has more than 800 students in undergraduate and graduate degree programs fully acknowledged in Brazil. More than half of CIn professors is engaged in projects within CESAR and so are more than 50 students.
CESAR's experience has showed that is possible to create and improve ways of developing region and country with weak economy and underdeveloped infrastructure in areas which are not thought to be in the realms of the third world. It's also possible to establish a cultural change towards the idea of the university not only as na academic centre but also a source of high technology services, products and new enterprises for society. Besides that, we have a new, orthogonal focus of IT academic research at UFPE, towards finding solutions to market demands and problems.
Barriers founded
- A lack of integration between university and society.
- Underdevelopment of the region and the fact that the region does not have a strong industry.
- Insufficient financial resources.
- Very few training courses focused on entrepreneurship.
- Lack of venture capital to invest in new companies.
- Initial resistance of teaching and R+D staff to further integration with the local and national economies
CESAR's future plans:
- To strengthen the process of creating companies (better support, effective tracking, stronger participation of all partners - industries, investors, government and companies).
- Certificate CESAR by the ISO9000 rules, further aiming to transfer that knowledge to other companies, improving regional competitiveness.
- Increase CESAR's participation in the national and international market.
- Hope to help creating CESAR-like institutions elsewhere in the region and parts of the world that could profit from the idea.
Lessons
lessons learned
- Partners: Procenge Ltda, Grupo Bompreço, Secretaria de Planejamento do Estado de Pernambuco - SEPLAN, Superintendência de Desenvolvimento do Nordeste, Comércio e Soluções Inteligentes - CSI, ITEP e SOFTEX, Cin/UFPE.
- Sustainability: >6 years
- Budget: >500.000
- CESAR is self sufficient
Development Impacts
CESAR's home page: http://www.cesar.org.brRadix: http://www.radix.com.br
CIn's home page: http://www.cin.ufpe.br
Project Information
Total budget in US$ : -Country of activity: Brazil [BR]
Contact Information
Silvio Lemos MeiraDisclaimer: No stories on this website shall be reproduced or stored in any other retrieval system without the written permission of the infoDev/IICD. Although every precaution will be taken in the preperation and maintenance of this collection of stories, neither infoDev, IICD or the submitting parties assume any responsibilities for errors or omissions. In addition, no liability is assumed fordamages resulting from the use of the information supplied in the stories.