During the development of this Forum, a panel of international experts on the topic "innovation applied to MSMEs" was held, with the participation of Susana Carillo, Innovación y Digitalización Urbana del Ayuntamiento de Málaga, and Edna R. Bravo Ibarra, director of the Laboratorio de Innovación Semiosis Lab, Quantic Labs.

They agreed in recommending that the growth of MSMEs in the region is closely linked to the support they receive for their innovation projects, as well as the coordination of institutions, governments and society itself in the change of mentality and the promotion of education towards innovative entrepreneurship.

"According to our surveys, 86% of MSMEs have innovated in the region. It must be understood whether it is innovation or improvisation. In that survey only 30% consider innovation important in the various processes of their companies and that gives us an idea of wanting to improve what you do. This is a pending issue we have in the region that has to do with changing the business mentality, empowering leadership in this sense and having an effect on companies and the rest of the ecosystems", saidd David Cabrera, director of CENPROMYPE.

Innovation projects generated among micro, small and medium-sized Central American entrepreneurs will have greater growth projections with the support policies expected to emerge from the High Level SICA Forum for the reactivation of MSMEs, through articulation methodologies that concentrate efforts between the academic, private and public sectors and the entrepreneurs themselves, said David Cabrera, executive director of the Centro Regional de Promoción de la MIPYME (CENPROMYPE).

"To talk about exponential change requires coherence in the country's leaders who make decisions, because they are the ones who manage the resources that we citizens pay for. In reality this is not the case, it is companies or philanthropic citizens who are in charge of projects that generate exponential change", commented Edna R. Bravo Ibarra, director of the Laboratorio de Innovación Semiosis Lab Quantic Labs.

"What we expect from the forum is to generate articulation processes to promote democratized innovation, micro innovation, and to seek resources to foster this development and growth. The forum should promote these schemes and strategic lines to materialize this process", said the head of CENPROMYPE.