The 4th Industrial Revolution and the cities, The Alliance for Innovation in the city of Porto Alegre

Porto Alegre is the capital and largest city of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the southern most Brazilian state. Over the last years there was an ongoing movement of turning Porto Alegre into a reference in the area of innovation, knowledge and entrepreneurship, based on the fact that every city in the world has to develop strategies to face the challenges of the 4 Industrial Revolution. In order to do that in an innovative way, a formal alliance was created and led by three large benchmarking Brazilian Universities located in Porto Alegre (UFRGS, PUCRS and Unisinos) and its STPs (Zenit, Tecnopuc and Tecnosinos, all three IASP full members). The main goal of this alliance is to articulate high-impact initiatives and stakeholders in order to turn the city into a hub for new technology-based ventures and startups in the era of the digital economy, attracting new investments and developing talent in the capital's innovation ecosystem. The union of the three universities aims to transform the region into an international reference in innovation, knowledge and entrepreneurship. In this paper we describe the alliance, its projects and current status.