Innovation and the Development Convention in Brazil

Abstract

From the beginning of the nineties the Brazilian economy was ruled by a specific view of the process of economic development, which emphasized the role of technical progress as a means to achieving fast and stable economic growth. Nonetheless, the degree of endogenous technical innovation in Brazil remains very low. This paper explores the conjecture that the latter result is a consequence of the hegemonic view of development. The first section presents some quantitative and qualitative data to support our assertion about the innovativeness of the Brazilian economy. The second section argues that the “view of development” may be profitably treated as a “convention”, a set of beliefs shared by decision-makers and used to identify the main issues which a development strategy has to tackle and the appropriate means to address such issues. A development convention contains also a “negative” agenda — issues and solutions which should be avoided. The same section then analyses the development convention which was hegemonic from the nineties to the date of the paper (2002) and the implications of its positive and negative agendas for technological development, assuming such convention had worked as its supporters supposed it would. It argues that the theoretical results are consistent with the facts described in the first section. The last section comments the actual working of the development convention, arguing that it stressed the main technological features present in the “pure form” of the convention and concludes with a brief discussion of the role of innovation in a new development convention which seemed to be arising at that time.