Havana's Scientific-Technological Park celebrates five years of innovation

 HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 5 (ACN) Established on February 4, 2020 within the University of Computer Science, the first of Cuba’s Scientific-Technological Parks (PCT) has reached its fifth anniversary after years of sustained efforts to boost national development through the use of science and innovation based on problem-solving teamwork, according to its president Rafael Torralbas Ezpeleta.

“Our center in Havana brings together projects and start-ups to link the field of knowledge with production and services sectors so that any innovative idea can evolve and reach the market”, he added, “as befits its original purpose of promoting innovation, development and research”.

Mr. Torralbas Ezpeleta remarked that these parks, whose origins date back to the 1950s at Stanford University and Silicon Valley in the United States, serve to prompt results, provide goods and services, and bring professionals closer to the innovation system.

“They make it possible to combine research and production, two worlds otherwise separated, since the idea is that enterprises incubated within the PCT learn from the university to find cross-sectional solutions to specific problems”, he explained. “The PCT promotes technology-based companies, as they are the least represented in the country's business fabric, a status which Cuba should change because today our hard currency in this field only comes from the biopharmaceutical industry despite the potential of high-tech services”.

Even if Havana’s PCT is ICT-focused, it has impact on other branches such as software development, tourism payment gateways, and industrial automation through attractive proposals leading up to new enterprises, he added, based on a hundred projects and 30 incubated IT entities gathering around 1,100 professionals as much as on its links with other similar ecosystems around the world, 18 foreign clients, and the enterprise EMSI FARMA established in the Scientific Park of Alicante, Spain.

“What we have achieved in these five years with the incubation of projects and companies needs to be sustained over time, but we also need to grow strategically and be more selective regarding truly innovative ideas so that our results can have an impact”, he underscored.
Creation, growth and competitiveness are the premises of this institution and its efforts to contribute to the Cuban economy.

The International Association of Science Parks and Innovation Districts is present in more than 80 countries regardless of their socioeconomic development.