Sources of technological opportunity in Brazil

This paper aims to assess the relevance of different sources of TO for Brazilian industriesand to compare the results with those obtained in science-frontier countries. The paper uses microlevel data from PINTEC (2003). The paper covers two different sources of TO: extra-mural sourcesof knowledge and technological trajectories and compare them with sectoral R&D intensity,sectoral rate of innovation (innovative output) and a input-output measure of TO, that is, of theprobability of an innovative effort transforming into an innovation. The paper concludes that: (i)the knowledge used by Brazilian industry is highly production intensive. Very few sectors giverelevance to sources of knowledge outside industry. Technological trajectories patterns are alsodifferent from scientific frontier countries; (ii) the distinguishing factors in terms of innovativestrategy and performance are different. They refer, on the supply side, to sources of informationoutside Brazil, that is, most innovative industries require international sources of information anddo not use Brazilian scientific and technology institutions. On the demand side, behavior is framedby market regulation institutions that require the use of productive standards. Therefore, mostinnovative industries make use of certification agencies to attend to market regulation standards,that is, innovation in Brazil is not associated with technological breakthroughs but it is related tofollowing quality patterns; (iii) this pattern of distinguishing sectors is quite different from leadingcountries' results whose distinguishing features are proximity to science and the use of highereducation and research labs.