Immature systems of innovation: introductory notes about a comparison between South Africa, India, Mexico and Brazil based on science and technology statistics

This paper compares the national systems of innovation of four countries (South Africa, India, Mexico and Brazil). This paper dialogues with the line of research of Amsden (2001), focusing on countries of the "rest". This paper initially locates these four countries in the international context. Then it focuses on the technological dimension (presenting data on USPTO patents) and on the scientific dimension (based on statistics of scientific papers indexed by the ISI). Finally this paper investigates the interactions between science and technology (inter-sectorally, inter-regionally and inter-temporally). This investigation suggests the existence of "partial connections" between science and technology working in these "immature" NSIs.