Nanotechnology in Colombia: Constructing Networks for the Development

Résumé En

The nanotechnologies have had a considerable development in the last years. While United States, Europe and some countries of Asia stand out in the field, the Latin America region doesn't appear in the important positions in the rankings of production of papers, patents and entrepreneur activity. How are evolving the region in those areas? Some studiesrelated with the nanotechnologies in their countries have concentrated in evaluate several positions about of the advantage and problems that these technologies will carry to them, or in the analysis of the big actors in the region (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico), but little has been evaluated about of the smaller players. The focus of this paper is study the Colombia's case. Two elements of analysis are developed. The first is descriptive, and is oriented toevaluate three questions: Which are the principal actors in nanotechnology in this country?How they organize their activities? Which are the elements that generate interactions between actors? The second is reflective, and is oriented for the question: What do possibilities and challenges Colombia face to continue the development in those fields? The study found that several actors in Colombia had constructed networks that across thenational and institutional limits, and that there is few local collaboration among actors. Finally some reflections are proposed.