The innovation challenge in Brazil.

• Grant number: 23/18126-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date until: August 26, 2024
• End date until: November 25, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Economics
• Principal Investigator: Sergio Robles Reis de Queiroz
• Grantee: Sergio Robles Reis de Queiroz
• Host Investigator: Nicholas Spyridon Vonortas
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: George Washington University, United States

Abstract

In the last two decades, Brazil has considerably increased its financing and incentive instruments for promoting R&D. Despite this, total expenditures on R&D, especially business expenditures, remained practically stagnant at a low level. Associated with this, the results presented by the country in terms of innovation have also been disappointing throughout this century.It is a known fact that Brazil went from having an extraordinary economic performance during much of the 20th century to experiencing mediocre growth from 1980 onwards. Brazil became part of those in the category of the so-called middle-income trap countries.There is a broad and inconclusive debate about the reasons for the low dynamism of the Brazilian economy over the last four decades. From macroeconomic instability to the role played by the State, including several other issues such as low investment in education, for example, there are many causes identified for the problem, but the diagnosis is far from any consensus.Important changes that occurred in the world, especially since the 1980s, affect the Brazilian situation. Globalization, the emergence of global value chains (GVCs) and the role of technology-intensive entrepreneurship are prominent examples.This work aims to show how certain transformations that occurred in the world economy from the 1980s onwards, added to a set of domestic problems, blocked the trajectory of industrial and technological development that Brazil had been following since the 1930s. The innovation challenge faced by the country will not be overcome without a correct understanding of these processes.