Science, Technology, Innovation and Social Inclusion: an urgent agenda for universities and policy

Inequality is one of the roots of divergences in development. Knowledge and innovation are factors that increasingly structure inequality; they are key for economic growth, that is no more inclusive today than yesterday. Knowledge and innovation could become major factors of social inclusion. This paper argues that this will not happen due to their contribution to economic growth alone, even if such growth redistribute wealth to some extent; it will not happen either only through very expensive solutions made available by huge financial efforts. Complementarily, it is critically important to appeal to and to mobilize the available knowledge and innovation capabilities, and to relate them to problems stemming from everyday day life and from the needs of the most deprived sectors of the population. Three types of agendas are needed to foster the latter. An "agenda from within", able to orient the work of researchers and innovative entrepreneurs; an "agenda from outside", a policy agenda, able to foster a good articulation between knowledge, innovation and social inclusion in several specific policies; an "agenda from the margin", able to put forwards demands, needs, problems and the type of required solutions. Trying to integrate these three aspects, the University Research Council (Universidad de la Republica) implemented the Program "Research Oriented Towards Social Inclusion": the lessons stemming from its two first editions are analyzed in the paper.