Davos comes to LatAm via Rio

A little piece of Switzerland will be coming to Rio this week as the Latin America version of the World Economic Forum in Davos focuses attention on this part of the world for three days from Wednesday – IT Decisions will be there to cover the event.

The WEF has a diverse mandate and will be covering issues such as Human Rights and food distribution, but there are some key parts of the conference that we expect to find interesting from a hi-tech perspective.

• Trade; how Brazil and its neighbours can encourage greater trade with other countries to the benefit of the LatAm region.
• Talent; how education systems can be examined and improved with a focus on creating the next generation of knowledge workers.
• Risk; how global companies can include LatAm in their supply chain for both sales and production without incurring unacceptable business risk.
• Entrepreneurialism; how increased access to start-up capital, such as the VC community, can increase the rate of start-up creation.
• Extreme events; floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters have wreaked havoc on the world in the past year – what can companies do to mitigate these natural risks?

These are the macro issues Brazil needs to face if it is to develop and grow the existing hi-tech industry. The appreciation of the Real is making it unattractive to export some services at present, but this really only applies to the services where cost comparison is a major factor.

Where Brazil has the expertise, services are still being exported. And the domestic market for hi-tech services continues to grow – this domestic market is the real engine supporting the hi-tech economy.

Brazil has to deal with macro issues such as education, trade barriers, and entrepreneurs finding easier access to capital if the hi-tech industry is to grow further. The WEF is a great forum for these issues to be discussed because the real decision-makers act on this stage – the opening session alone features commentators such as the CEOs of Citibank and Embraer.

Angelica Mari will be on the ground in Rio throughout the entire event. Follow her – or the IT Decisions account – on Twitter and feel free to tweet comments or suggestions for questions during the week – Angelica will be meeting as many of the WEF speakers and delegates as possible and will ask as many of your questions as she can.

Photo by Matt Sephton licensed under Creative Commons