Completed · Territory
ELI Cocais: Building an Innovation Ecosystem in Caxias and Timon
Ten months of territorial articulation that transformed two municipalities in eastern Maranhão into an innovation ecosystem with established governance, three strategic sectors, and an official action plan.
- Institution
- SEBRAE-MA, Innovation and Technology Unit
- Territory
- Caxias and Timon, Cocais Region (MA)
- Period
- 2025
- Role
- Lead consultant and ELI facilitator, through INGETI, the contract's executing company. Responsible for institutional articulation, conducting the five workshops, maturity diagnosis, and drafting the 2026 Action Plan.
The problem
Caxias and Timon have a combined population of over 335,000, two IFMA campuses, private universities, and a joint GDP of approximately BRL 4.2 billion. Even so, there was no innovation ecosystem: the stakeholders existed but operated in isolation, without governance, a common agenda, or any entity connecting university, business, government, and civil society.
What was at stake
SEBRAE-MA needed more than just a diagnosis. It needed the territory to take the lead, because an ecosystem that depends on a facilitator to exist dies when the contract ends. The project's real question was not 'how to map the stakeholders in Cocais,' but 'how to leave in December and have something that continues to work without me'.
The intervention
Ten months of fieldwork, with over 1,500 hours of technical consulting, structured on the ELI Methodology and organized around five guiding questions: where are we, how are we, who are we, how will we get there (OKRs), and how will we get there (action plan).
Five co-created workshops were held itinerantly between the two cities so that neither felt like the process's headquarters: historical and resource mapping at SEBRAE Caxias, maturity diagnosis at IFMA Timon, purpose and governance definition at the Caxias Secretariat of Economic Development, OKRs at UEMA Timon, and action plan at IFMA Caxias.
Between workshops, there were monthly field missions, institutional visits, and mapping interviews. The governance design used the P2P tool (principles, participants, structure, and practices) and appointed Sectoral Guardians for each of the three prioritized sectors, so that responsibility was distributed among territorial institutions and not concentrated in SEBRAE.
Applied method: ELI Methodology (SEBRAE National / Impact Hub Brasil, 2024), with maturity diagnosis by the CERTI Foundation, Golden Circle, and 5W2H+ Canvas.
Results
40+
quadruple helix stakeholders mobilized: government, academia, companies, and organized civil society
Source: Final Report ELI Cocais, SEBRAE-MA/INGETI · dec/2025
5
methodological workshops held between June and October 2025
Source: Final Report ELI Cocais, SEBRAE-MA/INGETI · dec/2025
3
strategic sectors prioritized by vote: agribusiness, education and technology, and tourism
Source: Final Report ELI Cocais, SEBRAE-MA/INGETI · dec/2025
6.91
first ecosystem maturity measurement, on the CERTI Foundation's 0 to 30 scale. This is the baseline for 2026, not a performance score
Source: Final Report ELI Cocais, SEBRAE-MA/INGETI · dec/2025
Governance
established, with Sectoral Guardians appointed and the Innovation Pact publicly signed on December 4, 2025
Source: Final Report ELI Cocais, SEBRAE-MA/INGETI · dec/2025
Plan 2026
2026 Action Plan formalized, with OKRs by sector, deadlines, responsible parties, and costs
Source: Final Report ELI Cocais, SEBRAE-MA/INGETI · dec/2025
Cocais Valley
consolidated as the ecosystem's identity and community
Source: Final Report ELI Cocais, SEBRAE-MA/INGETI · dec/2025
During the period, IFMA Timon achieved 1st place nationally in startup incubation. This is a territorial asset, not a project result, and it is exactly the kind of strength that the ecosystem's structuring began to connect.
Evidence
Final Report ELI Cocais 2025
Public document, 45 pages.
Official launch event
December 4, 2025, Caxias-MA.
Client
SEBRAE-MA, Innovation and Technology Unit.
What I learned
An ecosystem is not implanted, it is articulated. The temptation in such projects is to deliver a beautiful document and a crowded event; what sustains the result is who remains responsible for each part after the consultant leaves. That's why governance came before the plan, not after. And that's why the workshops were itinerant.
The second lesson is about honesty in measurement. A maturity of 6.91 on a scale of 30 is a low number, and there was implicit pressure to present it more generously. Maintaining the real measurement is what makes it possible to prove progress in 2026. A diagnosis that pleases is a diagnosis that is useless.