A call to utilize cluster strategies to achieve a productive, coopetitive, prosperous, inclusive and sustainable economy was made today by prominent Spanish academic Jon Azúa, President and founder of Enovating Lab, during his delivery of the XVIII Raúl Prebisch Lecture at the central headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, Chile.
Jon Azúa, a former Vice President and Minister who promoted a major productive transformation based on cluster policies in the Basque Country, gave a keynote lecture entitled “Clustering a productive, competitive, prosperous, inclusive and sustainable economy: towards the co-creation of the economic development we want.”
He was received by ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, who welcomed him on behalf of the institution. “The Prebisch Lecture is a tribute to the memory of Raúl Prebisch, one of the most influential thinkers in our history, but it is also a platform for critical analysis, for thinking about the future and enriching our thinking with new ideas that allow us to contribute to the regional conversation about how to move towards more productive, inclusive and sustainable development,” he stated.
“Today’s lecturer, Jon Azúa, is a man of thought and deliberative, adaptive and intelligent action, based on a powerful combination: a clear forward-looking vision complemented by continual, deep reflection on how to move towards that future we desire. In light of the importance of productive development policies (PDPs) for the major productive transformation that Latin American and Caribbean countries need in order to escape not only the trap of low capacity for growing and transforming, but also the trap of high inequality and low social mobility, and in light of Mr. Jon Azúa’s experience regarding the whats, the hows and the whys of PDPs, it is eminently clear that today’s lecture has enormous relevance for the region and for ECLAC’s work,” the senior United Nations official emphasized.
In his presentation, Jon Azúa explained that “clustering an economy is an instrument that serves a purpose and the purpose is none other than to provide ourselves with a true strategy for competitiveness, well-being, prosperity, wealth, inclusivity, co-creating value within that society, putting people at the center of our process and our work,” he indicated.
“We must think about how and what is absolutely necessary for making a transformation and being able to overcome what you (at ECLAC) have called the major growth and development gaps in Latin America and ask ourselves how we can address the inevitable, absolute and indispensable economic and social transformation that our countries and the world in general need,” Azúa insisted.
In order to tackle a process with these characteristics, he said that first, we must take ownership of our future. “Each and every one of us, all the regions, all the countries, and especially any person who has some sort of authority or leadership role for transforming their own society, must make the effort and be driven to take ownership of their future. This is not about waiting to see what futures come our way; it is about wanting a certain future and trying to do everything possible to achieve it,” he stated.
With regard to “clustering” (economic activity), Jon Azúa explained that “it is a highly natural glove, it is putting the economy and territory together, it is being able to facilitate development, an instrumentation, an institutionalization of the human, social and institutional capital needed in a country for its development, and acting accordingly.”
Meanwhile, he defined the term “coopetitiveness” as the capacity to collaborate with distinct agents, without setting aside our stances. “We always talk about collaborating, it seems like something natural and the easiest thing in the world, but it is extremely difficult. But at the same time we must compete with the same people and institutions that we collaborate with, since we cannot give up our principles entirely. It’s a kind of ‘schizophrenia,’” he said.
He added that clusterization enables and facilitates trust, dialogue between different actors, the pursuit of objectives that can be shared, an understanding of what is happening in a region and a country, and the convening power of governments, beyond their programs and policies, to foster agreement and commitment, and it ultimately enables joint progress.
He also said there is no reason for public and private areas to do the same thing; each has its role and its responsibility vis-à-vis competitiveness and vis-à-vis this clusterization (of the economy). “The center and the true commitment of both lies in co-creating value that is at the service of society and of people. We have the need to redefine a new Strategic Framework for new industrial and competitiveness policies, different active roles of areas/territory, the roles of companies and challenges/aspirations,” he said.
Finally, Jon Azúa asserted that “we don’t want more lost decades. This entails combating and overcoming the gaps that hinder our growth and inclusive development and focusing on the co-creation of value and on its equitable distribution,” he underscored.
The Raúl Prebisch Lecture was created in 2001 by ECLAC’s then Executive Secretary José Antonio Ocampo, as a way to pay tribute to the renowned Argentine economist 100 years after his birth. In August 2001, the first lecturer in the Commission’s new series was the widely remembered Brazilian economist Celso Furtado. Since then, other prominent figures have delivered the lecture, such as Joseph Stiglitz, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Rubens Ricupero, Dani Rodrik, Enrique V. Iglesias, Tulio Halperin, Fernando Savater, Aldo Ferrer, José Antonio Ocampo, Danilo Astori, Luiz Gonzaga de Mello Belluzzo, Rolando Cordera, Mariana Mazzucato, Ricardo Ffrench-Davis, Ha-Joon Chang and Rebeca Grynspan.
