A delegation from the Mexican of State of Nuevo Leon recently visited Alberta Innovates to learn more about Alberta's innovation system, promote commerce and encourage innovation between our two regions.They signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of Alberta focused on the areas of information and communication technologies, life sciences, environmental technologies and clean energy. The aim is to help attract investment and growth for both regions."We have a culture of innovation just as Alberta does," says Americo Garcia, Nuevo Leon's Undersecretary of Industry Commerce and Services. "We see many mutual opportunities to establish links for foreign trade between our companies and Alberta companies, both export and import.""We're excited about the possibility of expanding the already successful Global Partnerships program into Nuevo Leon," says Sandra Candie, the program's director. "Both regions are leading the way in the development of emerging technologies and supporting Small Medium Enterprises to grow international partnerships and expand trade."Sergio Perez, Director of Clusters with the State of Nuevo Leon, says they have a well-established collaboration culture, an important head start when working with regions like Alberta. "Small and Medium Enterprises [SMEs] make up a great part of our GDP and it is very important to help these enterprises to develop. They create a lot of jobs and contribute a lot of value to our economy," says Garcia.The group toured our applied research subsidiaries, CFER and InnoTech Alberta, to explore the work being done in areas such as the pipeline integrity, Cellulose Nanocrystals pilot plant, Engineered Composites panel pilot plant, improving well design and performance and energy and oil. All of the applied research space is used by industry, government and SMEs to test, scale-up or de-risk technologies and processes."I am very interested in the cellulose nanocrystal pilot plant and all of the infrastructure you have for scaling up," says Karym Giacoman, CEO of the Nanotechnology Cluster in Nuevo Leon. "It's amazing the ecosystem you have here in Alberta, it's really connected and similar, and something we need to grow in Nuevo Leon."If you're a small or medium-sized business and you're keen to explore a partnership in Mexico, or China, find out more about our Global Partnerships program.Pictured above: Siguo Chen, team lead for Engineered Composites, speaks with delegates from Nuevo Leon.