We live in an era where great things have happened thanks to innovation. Everybody loves innovation and recognises that it is a force for progress. With the exception of maybe North Korea, no government in the world has an official policy to prohibit innovation or harass innovative people.
What’s more, innovation is so universally appreciated that even Venezuela’s dictator (and former bus driver) Nicolás Maduro recognizes its potential. In September 2019, his government conducted a census targeting innovators and scientists in order to find solutions for the country’s problems: the food and industry have collapsed. The government wants to use the “creative capacities” and “genius” of the Venezuelan citizens, as vice president Delcy Rodríguez said.
It seems that everybody loves innovation, right? In reality, things tend to be more complicated though. Too often, appraisals for innovation are nothing but lip service. And the devil, as they say, is in the details.
The LatAm Scenario
A quick review of those details shows that many innovative ideas and projects are under attack in Latin America. For instance, Glovo, a very popular delivery app, has had its operations suspended twice in Buenos Aires just this year due to alleged “traffic violations”.
Meanwhile, in Chile, a group of senators have submitted a proposal to change the status of Glovo’s deliverers to full employees. This regulation would destroy both the nature and business model of the company.
Vaping is another interesting example. Here, there is widespread prohibition in most of the countries at the national level except in Chile and Colombia. In Argentina, as well as in Uruguay, Mexico and Brazil, selling e-cigarettes is banned.
Nonetheless, the market is booming around the whole region. Why? Because these prohibitions are not usually enforced. However, prohibition hangs like the sword of Damocles over the heads of everyone involved. Consequently, the situation of sellers and consumers is precarious. As in any other grey market, the lack of coherent rules and regulations distorts what could be a thriving economic activity and deprives consumers from proper supply.
The sharing economy is also a typical target. This year, Uber in Mexico City has been forced to establish minimum prices for its rides and not to charge in cash. These two things are a great threat to the company, which claims it could lose up to 40,000 drivers as a consequence.
The legal status of Uber in Colombia is still grey. What’s more, the constitutional court recently overruled a norm that established a 25-years driving prohibition for Uber drivers.
Finally, brand violation has hit rock bottom in Chile, where one can find the world’s first faceless, plain-packaged Easter bunny. This is one of the biggest monstrosities ever witnessed by humankind. How joyless can you be to take away the beauty of chocolate for children? To add insult to injury, one of the ideologues of Chile’s extreme plain packaging policies was awarded for contributing to “world food security” by the UN’s food and agriculture organisation (FAO).
Meanwhile, innovation is how people take matters into their own hands. And when we create new technologies or business models they should be permitted by default. Unless a very strong case can be made against a new invention, innovations should be allowed to exist and be market-tested by consumers. Doing the opposite is the real catastrophe, because, as Adam Thierer explains, “trying to preemptively plan for every hypothetical worst-case scenario means that many best-case scenarios will never come about”.
This is, in a nutshell, why we’re launching the Latin American alliance Somos Innovación (SI). We want to foster innovative solutions in our countries. We want to see them applied. We are the voice of a thriving civil society which wants to progress through innovation, the adoption of new technologies and human creativity.
Our vision is a Latin America turned into a fertile land for innovation and testing of innovative solutions. A continent where there is a generalised disposition of both the population and the governments in favor of the experimentation of new alternatives for the resolution of problems.
This is going to be a results-oriented organisation. We want to provoke change and improvements in the issues we deal with, and we want to emphasise positive messages and human stories.
In order to do this, we need your help. Visit our website at www.somosinnovacion.lat, join us on social media, and let’s unleash innovation together.
