INCOBRA - Increasing International Science, Technology and Innovation Cooperation between Brazil and the European Union

The INCOBRA project [Increasing International STI Cooperation between Brazil and the European Union] organized on the beginning of the year, in Frankfurt, Germany, the second Strategic Foresight Workshop (SFW). Complementary to the workshop organized in Campinas (SP) last year, this edition of the Workshop aimed at discussing the conclusions from the first workshop and evidence the counterparts of the European Union (EU) in relation to six priority areas: Bioeconomy; Energy; Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and Marine Science; Nanotechnology; ICT and Big Challenges.

The SFW brought together professionals from different countries from the European Union and from different parts of Brazil with combined expertise to ensured that all the critical areas from the first Workshop were also addressed in this second edition. The participants jointly elaborated a vision for the future of the BR-EU ST&I cooperation, underling how the topics of the first workshop can benefit both EU and Brazil. Nine "hot topics" were listed as promising for the viability of this vision.

"As with any collaboration, it is crucial to establish key points of convergence and divergence of perspectives before engaging in the construction of 'roadmaps' and strategic actions. By bringing an European perspective to emphasize the priorities and challenges that emerged in Campinas, it became possible to create a comprehensive vision for Brazil-EU cooperation in research / innovation and identify nine 'hot topics' with high potential for cooperation” explained Philine Warnke, representative of Fraunhofer ISI, partner in INCOBRA. 

In the first SFW, the strategy defined by INCOBRA was to bring together more than 50 participants - most of them professionals from research and innovation institutions in Brazil - in small thematic groups, using the individual multi-criteria evaluation, as well as to establish a group consensus on a series of topics that emerged from an analysis of prospective studies and also through public consultations.

For the second SFW, INCOBRA implemented a different methodology to develop a range of topics that could explain the results of the first workshop under a more comprehensive framework of EU-Brazil cooperation. With a smaller group of participants, which counted with experts from research, industry and governance, the aim of this second Workshop was to find and provide data for building a promising scenario for BR-EU ST&I cooperation.

"By developing one or more high-potential topics in each of the designated priority areas, we were able to better explain the conditions under which EU-Brazil collaboration could be more prosperous," said Philine.

The second Workshop delivered three main results. The first one was the development of a broad and comprehensive vision that can be useful to all actors involved with the INCOBRA project, as well as for future partners. The second result was a series of "future artifacts," this time in the form of newspaper articles beginning in 2030. The third and final result was a list of "hot topics" from different sectors of technological development.

Experience 

The SFWs provided the approximation of Brazilian and European researchers and institutions enabling the construction of a future scenario for possible cooperation. This vision can be used to guide policy decisions, channel funding to maximize the benefit to society through scientific research and to develop national and international strategies for future joint science, technology and innovation (ST&I) collaborations.

Next steps

Following, INCOBRA will develop Action Plans to enable successful cooperation, from the topics identified as the most important. These Action Plans will also be used to identify the bilateral cooperation networks that will be supported by the project in the next upcoming months.
 

For more information about the project and EU-BR STI cooperation, INCOBRA HELPDESK

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