Brazilian Silicon Valley

Brazilian Silicon Valley is a term commonly applied to the region of Campinas and in southern region this term is applied for Florianópolis city, Brazil because of its similarity to the 'original' Silicon Valley, located in California in the USA.

Main building of IBM Brazil in Hortolândia, Campinas.
Main building of Lucent Brazil in Campinas.

Characteristics

Campinas has gained this distinction because it has several comparable features, such as:

History

Until the 1970s, the Campinas region had few industries and had an economy based on agriculture and in the services and commerce sectors. With the foundation of UNICAMP and the ready availability of high-quality researchers, engineers and students focused on physics, electrical engineering, computer sciences, mathematics, mechanical engineering, etc., a number of high-tech companies started to establish their industrial plants and R&D labs nearby, such as IBM. The municipality of Campinas and those surrounding it began to foster actively the growth of this new area, and the CIATEC I and II (Companhia de Desenvolvimento do Pólo de Alta Tecnologia de Campinas) industrial zones were established around the university campus, in the subdistrict of Barão Geraldo. The Center for Research and Development (CPqD) set up by Telebras, a state holding for the telecommunications industry in Brazil, which had grown enormously under the military regime umbrella, was the second boost to Campinas Silicon Valley. A law was passed by the Federal government, protecting Brazilian-made technology against imports, and this resulted in further growth. Together with UNICAMP researchers a number of pioneering developments occurred in the brand-new areas of lasers, fiber optics, digital telephony, computer technology, software development, and so on. In addition, the Petrobras state-owned oil giant was starting to develop a long range oil exploration program with the aim of making Brazil independent of oil imports, a policy also started by the military for strategic and economic reasons (the oil shock had deeply affected the country), and UNICAMP was one of the leading research universities to participate. In this respect, UNICAMP's open philosophy of collaboration with the private sector (unheard of in Brazil until that time), established by his visionary founder and first rector, Dr. Zeferino Vaz, prepared the way for a unique synergy between industry and university.

Other areas

Other areas in Brazil are also claiming a similar status to Campinas Silicon Valley, although they are much less organized and with smaller companies. They are:

Bibliography
  • Lahorgue, M. A Science and Technology Park as a Tool for the Consolidation of Life Sciences Cluster: The Case of Porto Alegre Technopole, Center for Economic Development, Bulgaria.

See also
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