The persistent lack of success of attempts to create small and medium sized enterprises in the tertiary and secondary sectors underscored the need to devise and implement mechanisms capable of offering entrepreneurs the necessary knowledge and experience to prevail in their undertakings. The idea of firms’ incubators was considered, consisting of an adequate physical infrastructure and equipment, providing candidates with real-life contact with the main aspects of their business. Incubators have subsequently evolved focusing specially on the technological basis of affairs.

If this is important for commerce and industry, it is obviously vital for the livestock raising and agribusiness sectors, where technology has to be in keeping with the economic, social and environmental conditions of rural communities. Agricultural – industrial incubators are therefore essential. They are usually Comprehensive Occupational Schools offering rural producers and workers the sufficient and necessary knowledge, experiences, instruments and means to turn them into agribusiness entrepreneurs, and play a leading role in the agricultural productive chains. The strategy of these incubators rests upon the institutional agreements required to bring together complex and broad-based activities like those relevant to the development of agriculture and agribusiness.

It is in essence an educational process that relies on the modern concept of instruction within a given context of occupational competencies (skills), contributing specifically to improve people’s living standards. It is an education adapted to each regional situation, and its agricultural inclinations or aptitudes.

It is based on competencies so as to offer persons full knowledge and abilities for the performance of a job. It is occupational in nature because it aims at further education in tasks that were already carried out by individuals every day, and will continue to be so.

Finally, it is a process that will improve people’s living standards because besides imparting the productive skills distinctive of vocational training – which add economic value – incubators also provide instruction in the Social Promotion area, such as preventive medicine, alternative food, domestic hygiene, etc. that help to ameliorate people’s living conditions at a personal, home and community level.

This all-embracing educational package is delivered through occupational and programme modules that, with suitable support and activation, provide the necessary sequence to transform mere producers and sellers of commodities into agribusiness entrepreneurs.

The process begins with a register of persons that meet the requirements of the incubator proposal. This identifies potential candidates as well as procedural dynamics. Selection criteria for participation in the programme are thus defined: participants should be rural produces or workers; processors, middlemen or dealers in commodities or other products of the agricultural sector.

Selected candidates go through the occupational module that gives them further training until they can perform tasks to full satisfaction. This constitutes the very essence of the SENAR directive of "Learning by doing". Successful candidates go into the subsequent module where they are taught the know-how and techniques to carry out an economic analysis of their business.

If participants are interested and their projects are viable, they enter a third stage dealing with marketing and management techniques. In this manner, after production methods have been refined, economic viability checked out, market goals identified and management styles outlined. The final project is prepared and implemented with direct participation of the entrepreneurs themselves.

The Incubation Process is therefore based on four modules, namely, Occupation, Economic Analysis, Marketing/Management and Technical Project. By Occupation we mean an economic activity comprising tasks that lead to the completion of a product or service of commercial value. Economic Analysis consists of techniques enabling incubator candidates to decide whether the business they propose is viable or not. Market and Management include the knowledge and experience necessary for potential entrepreneurs to identify their market qualitatively and quantitatively, and to adopt a management scheme. The last module is the joint preparation of a Technical Project, with all side effects and implications, including financial aspects.

As a guarantee of funding support, the Brazil and Nordeste Banks have specialised representatives on the Managing Committees of Incubators. All along the incubation process, participants are encouraged to become associated with each other, and are made aware of the fundamental importance of scale economies. Also worth noting is that all incubator groups have to sell their products in the market in accordance with their respective Economic Analysis; they should only develop their Technical Project after the viability of the undertaking has been checked out.

The agribusiness incubator effort is gradual and staggered, insofar as each phase is a result in itself, in which participants are certified if they are successful. That certification improves their chances in the labour market as it bears witness to their abilities.

It is also important to reconcile the incubation period with he need of participants to continue producing and working in their normal activities, which implies negotiating training days and hours carefully and is an ideal example of participative education. The limits are that the total training load of some 228 hours must be delivered in a year’s time.

Each Incubator is established as a non profit Civil Society, run by a Managing Committee made up by representatives of the institutions directly involved, which is responsible even for the initial selection of candidates and their gradual culling.

The experience of Agribusiness Incubators has shown that there are great and interesting opportunities for self-managed small and middle-sized agricultural enterprises in the area of Bahía. Many results evidence added economic value to the rural raw materials. Examples are the manufacture of preserves, pickled vegetables, jam, sausages and dairy products that add 10 to 12 times the value of original commodities. Products are placed in principle in the local market.

Apart from such important economic and social results, agribusiness incubators are also of strategic value as they support small and medium sized enterprises and encourage the participation of rural producers and workers in the in the productive chain. This endogenous movement has far-reaching effects, insofar as it promotes the overall modernisation of primary production, industrialisation and marketing, with a permanent impact on the development of rural areas.

The INACAP, in Chile, has a series of technological centres where training services are provided to workers, technicians and professionals, as well as technological services of different kinds to firms and other bodies related to production, both of goods and of services. Among the INACAP technological centres, the International Telecommunications Training Centre (CINCATEL) stands out. Training courses designed and executed by this Centre are included in a wide variety of specialisations which are being implemented in the telecommunications field, based on market demand and on the feasibility of having the human, material and technological resources necessary to offer a training service which fulfills the demands of its clients. CINCATEL has laboratories for Digital Conmutation, PCM Transmission, Fiber Optic Transmission, Digital Microwaves, External Fiber Optics Plant, Computer Science and Internet, and Communications. It possesses both the infrastructure and the human resources needed to provide advisory and engineering services both to the private and the government sectors.

As examples of trade associations and technological institutes that carry out activities which converge with those performed by training institutions, we can mention, inter alia:

The Chilean Chamber of Construction (CCC), a body which, together with its normal functions as an employers’ association, has a Technological Development Corporation which provides services of: technological dissemination, through publications, encounters and seminars, and establishing relations with research and technological development centres in other countries; transfer of technology, through technological opportunity detection, co-ordination of business based on technology, advisory services for obtaining funds for technological innovation via contests, and technology transfer cycles; coordination of technological interest groups, for drafting technical and informative documents, regulatory documents, stimulating related research and managing technology transfer projects; promotion of technological studies, technical studies, sectoral analyses and feasibility studies. This action on the part of the CCC in the technological field is supplemented by the development of an initiative aimed at establishing competency profiles as required in the Chilean construction industry, as a way of guiding both firms in their screening, training and promotion of human resources policies, and the education sector and training system in the curricula they offer.

The SENA, of Colombia, has had, in its more than forty years of age, an increasing relationship with productive technological development. From the standpoint of this institution, its main function, to provide complete vocational training for the country’s workers, can be defined as a transfer of technology in a training environment, to be applied to the productive processes of firms of all sizes and technological complexities.

Among the specific fields of endeavour of the SENA the focus of which is explicitly the support of technological development, the following services can be singled out: support to sectoral agreements regarding competitiveness; applied research in association with other bodies; and special co-operation agreements. These activities are carried out mainly by 21 training and technological services centres which have comparative advantages to further technological development activities, in which a significant part of the resources of the body’s regular budget is invested. These centres possess an infrastructure in equipment and plant which can be used in strategic alliances with firms and technological development and productivity centres to promote activities in the framework of innovation and technological development.

At present that responsibility has been increased by the assignment of a significant part of its parafiscal income to productive technological development projects, in accordance with the provisions of Law 344 of 1996. By applying these resources the following is sought:

• To increase the competitiveness of productive sectors with the aim of promoting exports, improving innovative capacities and raising the level of learning of employers and workers, as support for the basic strategies of employment generation and upgrading the quality of life of the Colombian population.

• To provide vocational training in the country, to respond to the needs of the productive sector, in such manner that it be flexible, of good quality and relevant.

• To modernise SENA vocational training centre management systems.

• To initiate the dovetailing of the National Vocational Training System with the National Innovation System, establishing common approaches and strategies which enable the quality of technical and vocational education to be raised, technological innovation in productive sectors to be furthered and the creation of a new institutional culture for long term competitiveness in Colombia.

In a general way, Colombia has sought to structure its efforts regarding science and technology in a process beginning with the enactment of Law 29, of 1990, which provides for the development of scientific research and technological development and grants special powers, inter alia, to modify the statutes of official bodies with science and technology functions, including those of changing their appointments and linkages and creating the bodies needed. The Law was broadened and specified in 1996 by three decrees: one establishing rules governing association for scientific and technological activities, research projects and technology creation; another creating the National Science and Technology Council and reorganising the Colombian Institute for Science and Technology Development (COLCIENCIAS); finally, a decree which regulates the specific modalities of contracts for promoting scientific and technological activities.

This legal framework has provided an important base for reinforcing activities related to technological research and development by decentralised agencies such as the SENA, as well as universities and other institutes involved in the subject. In this context, the role assigned to vocational training, and concretely to the SENA, in competitiveness policy is very important, not only as a provider of training services, but also of funds for technological development projects. Together, SENA and COLCIENCIAS constitute the National Technological Development Projects Committee, the purposes of which are, inter alia: to propose specific actions for dovetailing the National Innovation System with the Vocational Training System, according to the general policy and guidelines established by the CONPES and the National Science and Technology Council; and to analyse the projects and the concepts of the evaluators and experts and decide on the feasibility of the initiatives that meet the requirements of relevance, quality, employer commitment and technological innovation.

One of the concrete expressions of the results of this strategy are the Technological Development Centres, in some cases managed directly by the SENA and in others by the private sector with the support of this institution. The SENA at present has Centres in different regions and cities of Colombia, to wit: ASTIN Centre for Technical Assistance to Industry; Colombian-German Centre, targeting welding processes and quality control; Metallurgy Centre, working in the field of iron patternmaking and moulding, ferrous and non-ferrous metal melting; Colombian-Italian Centre, in design and manufacturing systems with the aid of computers, applied to metal mechanical processes and products; Industrial Management Centre, in the fields of materials testing for metal mechanical quality control, thermal treatments and metallographic analysis, as well as programming, planning and control of industrial and maintenance processes, and industrial chemistry; Wood and Furniture Colombian-Canadian Centre; Textile Centre; Clothing Centre; Footwear Technological Centre; Hotel, Tourism and Food Centre; Graphic and Related Products Centre (SENIGRAF); Commercial Management and Marketing Centre; Latin American Minor Species Centre, in livestock activities.