Promoting Innovation and Competitiveness Project

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The overall development objective Promoting Innovation and Competitiveness Project will be to enhance Chile's policy and institutional innovation framework for competitiveness and improve the impact of priority innovation programs. More specifically, the project's objectives are to: (i) to strengthen the ministry of economy's (MoE's) capacity on innovation and ensure its coherence with other policies for competitiveness; (ii) strengthen National Commission For Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) and improve the coherence, quality and relevance of research funding policy in Chile; and (iii) stimulate technology transfer and the creation of new technology based enterprises through Chilean Development Agency (Corporation for the Promotion of Production) (CORFO). There are three components to the project. The first component of the project is strengthening the MoE capacity on innovation and related competitiveness policies. This component will enhance the MoE's institutional capacity to formulate, monitor, and evaluate innovation policies in accordance with the guidelines of the National Innovation Strategy. In addition, it will support selected elements of the broader Strategic Plan to strengthen the MoE, which is under advanced preparation, in order to foster consistency between innovation policies and other policies seeking to enhance Chile's competitiveness. This will also ensure that the innovation related units of the MoE operate within a solid and adequate institutional framework promoting sustainability of reforms. In addition, this component will support the project co-ordination unit within the MoE. The second component of the project is strengthening Chile's science base. This component will strengthen CONICYT by helping the institution formulate a strategic plan with clear medium-term goals aligned with the national innovation strategy, develop and implement a coherent research support policy, and increase its capacity to design and evaluate programs. At the end of the project, CONICYT will have increased capacity to design, oversee, and learn from the implementation of its programs. The Inter-ministerial Committee on Innovation and the ministry of education will guide CONICYT in the implementation of this component. The third component of the project is fostering technology transfer and new technology-based ventures. The component will strengthen CORFO-led programs that seek to stimulate the start-up of knowledge intensive businesses and the adoption of higher value technologies by small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and its monitoring and evaluation capacity. It will achieve the above through three subcomponents: (i) upgrading new technology based enterprise development, (ii) strengthening technology extension and transfer services for SMEs, and (iii) strengthening CORFO s monitoring and evaluation capacity of Innova Chile's programs.