(Originally published in LinkedIn on March 14, 2020)

I had the opportunity to attend the ignite conference at UC San Diego - California last year. I was amazed by how many similarities I could find between San Diego, (where I was a Visiting PhD student) and São Carlos (city in which I have been living in the past 5 years).

First, I will directly answer the question, both of those cities are losing talents to bigger cities. The students usually come to São Carlos and San Diego because of the great Universities (UC San Diego, USP, UFSCAR) and then when they get their diploma they leave to get a job in the main cities, students from São Carlos go to São Paulo, and students from San Diego go to the Bay Area.

Some points raised at the ignite future of economy panel were:

  • How to keep the talents?
  • How to put Industry and Academy together?
  • How to grow the community?

  1. How to keep the talents? The problem is that most of the students leave to work in bigger cities. I can see two possible solutions for this problem. We can bring the big companies to where the talent is (initiatives as ONOVOLAB are doing great on that), and we can foment students to pursue and develop their entrepreneurial skills. By co-living with Computer Science students in the past 10 years I can say that it is a great challenge to develop an entrepreneur mindset. Most of us usually do not have a strong mindset towards entrepreneurship. The first option, for most of us, is to get a job in a big tech company, thus ensuring a great incoming. Despite some initiatives to teach students entrepreneurship, e.g. classes, and hands on workshops, the "Entrepreneurship" subject is still optional, so the students interested will do it, but it is not part of the mandatory class curriculum.

  2. How to put Industry and Academy together? We need to decrease the hate speeches accusing the academy of being too elitist or too theoretical. If we really want to change the world to better we have to put our prides aside and get the best of Academy and Industry together to the best of our society. New entrepreneurs need to be connected to industry experienced people and that can help both sides, experience and innovation. A tool to connect experienced people to advisory boards of new born startups could create a huge impact of grown. Accelerators/incubators can help the first push. However, most of accelerators programs prefer companies that are already at good point of development. We need investors that are able to take the risk for startups that are not ready yet, and we need to provide support to those startups.

  3. How to grow the community? As I always say that São Carlos is a special place. We cannot mirror what happens here to other parts of the Country. We recognize the talent that is here (bigger concentration of PhDs in Brazil) and we also have the support of a great community. The ecosystem is very important and it is not easily found everywhere. It is important to have access to capital and access to talent, I think that in São Carlos we have access to great community and great talent, what is still missing here is the access to capital and to bring attention from angel investors.

Public universities were designed to improve the quality of life of our community. One way to do that is by growing the right work. Although we have great Universities in São Carlos, most of the students here come from other cities and states in Brazil. So, how can we authentically improve the life of the ones that are living in the city but outside of the context of the Universities?

We need to home grown talent and invest in the community that is here, around the university, to make them know that they also belong to where the decisions, and the technology are being made. That is why initiatives as the Technovation Summer school for girls may bring a huge impact to the population born/living in São Carlos, but that are absent to everything happening inside the university.

Bringing Sao Carlos' community to the University or taking the university to the community, one thing I know is that one way or the other we have to join efforts to make the opportunities more accessible and reachable to everyone. Public universities were designed to improve the quality of life of our community. One way to do that is by growing the right work. Big companies are emerging in Brazil, and the need for tech force goes beyond tech companies, reaching every business that wants to be data oriented. We need to prepare our population to the jobs of the future, and since half of population is female, we need to empower them through STEM.