R&D in the Public and Private Sector in Brazil: Complements or Substitutes?

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the evolution of the relations between the Brazilian public research sector, particularly the universities, and the productive sector as stimulated, directly or indirectly, by government policies from the 70's up to the present days. Special emphasis is given to the schemes devised by the Ministry of Science and Technology, which was created in 1985. The argument we want to develop is that government actions to bring universities and enterprises closer together may have succeeded in doing so for the duration of a specific project, but were unable to create long-lasting links. The role of university research as complementary to, and not substitute for, industrial research is emphasised in a number of recent studies on innovation, as outlined in the first section. Then, we proceed to the analysis of the evolution of the relations between the public sector research and industry in Brazil. We start with a sketch of the industrialisation by import substitution model adopted in Brazil, highlighting the role played in it by local R&D, when the country was under military rule. Next we tackle the changes in those relations as the country reoriented its development model with the return to democratic regime in 1985. The Ministry of Science and Technology, created in that year, has since then devised and implemented a number of schemes to foster links between public sector research and enterprises. The most significant of those schemes are presented and their results are analysed. We conclude by saying that government actions to stimulate private investment in R&D as well as fostering links between enterprises and public sector research had a very limited success