The meeting was the first stop of several days in São Paulo. It was organized by Open Industry, an initiative led by the Brazilian Association of Internet of Things (ABINC) with support from the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (ABDI) and the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), and hosted with the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (FIESP) and SENAI-SP. I had joined earlier Open Industry discussions on data spaces, so I arrived knowing some of the questions the audience would bring. What follows are my notes from the trip, drawing on the report Open Industry published afterwards.
Why a training center
The venue itself said something. The organizers were explicit that the digital transformation of industry depends as much on trained people and on cooperation between companies, academia and research as on technology. SENAI’s director opened by recalling the institution’s long role in building a skilled workforce for the State of São Paulo. One example stayed with me. SENAI’s mobile units take training and technology to regions with no permanent site. The organizers drew the parallel themselves. In digital transformation, too, the task is to make knowledge and technology reach the places where industry actually operates.
An ecosystem with many builders
Before my keynote I listened to how the Brazilian community is organizing itself. Instituto Eldorado presented its projects in software and data spaces. ABINC’s president described the association’s sectoral verticals, its dialogue with federal ministries and agencies, and its connections with VDMA, Gaia-X and IDSA.
One thing stood out to me over the following days. Much of Brazilian industry organizes itself through associations. I spent a day with the team at Instituto Eldorado that works on data spaces, talking through their projects and where IDSA can support them. I met Brasscom, which represents the country’s information and communication technology companies, in a hybrid session with around thirty people joining online. And I met the board of ABES, the Brazilian Association of Software Companies, which represents more than 2,000 companies. I had not expected the depth of knowledge about data spaces that I found there. Through a handful of associations, the conversation reaches thousands of companies at once.
That matters because a data space runs on shared rules, standards, interoperability and trust mechanisms that many participants have to agree on. No single organization can provide all of them. What I heard in São Paulo matched the principle at the core of the IDS Reference Architecture Model (IDS-RAM) and the IDSA Rulebook. Participants cooperate and exchange data while keeping control over how their data is used.
Data that carries value
Two use case talks stayed with me. The lead of ABINC’s Open Industry Committee made the point that data has to be worth sharing before it is shared. Machines, processes and logistics chains produce signals continuously. Turned into reliable, contextualized and interoperable information, the same data first used to track productivity can later feed artificial intelligence, advanced maintenance, traceability, the Digital Product Passport and data spaces. His advice was pragmatic. Start with one machine or one use case with a measurable economic result, then extend from there.
ABINC’s vice president showed decarbonization projects supported by data spaces. Carbon indicators depend on information held by several organizations in one production chain, and for audits or emissions calculations they need to be verifiable across company boundaries. This is where a data space does work that no company can do alone, while each participant keeps governance over its own data.
What Brazil can do with Europe’s experience
In my keynote I traced how data spaces developed in Europe, what we learned and how the European data economy is taking shape. My message to the room was that Brazil does not need to walk the same road. The standards, technologies, lessons and known difficulties are available, and they can be adapted to Brazil’s own industrial characteristics. The path the organizers described fits what I have seen work elsewhere. Begin with concrete use cases that show economic value, connect them, widen the circle of participants and then scale.
The organizers summed up the day in a sequence of eight words. Paper, digitalization, data, information, intelligence, sharing, data spaces, data economy. Each step is a transformation in its own right. Digitalizing a process is more than replacing paper with a screen. Sharing data is more than uploading it to a platform. At every step, information needs context, quality, interoperability, security and clear rules of use.
Brazil has the industrial base, the production chains, the training and research institutions and a growing technology ecosystem. The next step, as the organizers put it, is to connect these elements. I left São Paulo convinced that this connection is already under way.
This article draws on a report published by Open Industry, an initiative of the Brazilian Association of Internet of Things (ABINC): Economia de Dados — do papel aos Data Spaces, no SENAI Vila Mariana — Open Industry
