A report by Leticia Hernández for El Financiero explains 6 proposals of the Business Coordinator Council mentioned during the forum “Challenges for Mexico: Industry 4.0”

If Mexico wants to take part of the potential represented by digitalization in manufacture, known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it must bring the productive sector, the academy and research centres closer; improving young people’s education, including skills for the 21^st century; increasing investments in science and technology and promoting research and innovation centres with public-private alliances.

These were some of the main ideas that Juan Pablo Castañón Castañón, President of the Business Coordinator Council, in his keynote session during the forum “Challenges for Mexico: Industry 4.0”.

The executive pointed out that for years now the world has been talking about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but the truth is that in Mexico only one out of four companies that developed research and development activities, did so together with an academic institution; around 44% of employers claim it is difficult recruiting people with the proper skills, and 40% of young people do not feel they are ready to be part of the labour market.

As regards Research and Development investments, he said that Mexico spends four times less than the OECD average: only 0.6% against 2.4%.

According to data from Accenture, the Revolution 4.0 could increase global production around 20% during the next 15 years.

“Mexico can and must be a part of this trend. To do so, we must overcome backwardness. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the American continent barely has a 32% digitalization level. Though countries such as Germany are already seizing the benefits of digital manufacture, in Mexico we expect that this process, which already exists, will expand more during the next 5 or 10 years”, he said.

The 6 proposals are:

1- Promoting research and innovation centres with public-private alliances.

2- Promoting quality training model based on the needs of the productive sector (Dual Training). This increases business productivity, employability and income.

3- Creating Venture Capital Funds for innovation and development. Public policies must promote these funds and businessmen, public servants and researchers must be trained to make the most of them and take them to the market.

4- Raising joint investments between the government and the private sector to 1.5% of the GDP during the next five years.

5- Betting on innovation, creativity and product quality.

6- Generating greater incentives for better coordination between entrepreneurs, research centers and support public entities, “triple helix” models.