Moving from a catching up position towards international leadership: lessons from the coffee sector in Costa Rica

The contribution of any specific sector to the development of a country evolves alongthe time. In some periods a country can move from a catching up towards a leadingposition with respect other countries. The factors explaining this change of position isrelated to the evolution of the system of innovation. This kind of phenomena has beenstudied by different authors using an approach of sectoral system of innovation. Thispaper presents a study on the evolution of the coffee sector in Costa Rica, assessing themain innovations in different stages of development and the evolution of the sectoralsystem of innovation. The research project was based in a literature surveycomplemented by interviews to experts and actors in the sector, and with the analysis ofdata bases. The main argument is that there are different stages of development of thecoffee sector, in which the role of the main dimensions of the sectoral system(institutions, specific actors, networks, agglomeration economies, human capital, andlearning processes by firms) have evolved, giving the condition to relevant institutionaland technological innovations. The sector changes from a catching up position for manyyears towards a leading position in the last decade. A result is that Costa Rica is passingfrom exporting coffee as a raw product to export intensive knowledge coffee, in whichR&D and several institutional innovations results in the specialization on high qualitycoffee with one of the highest productivity in plantations in the world.