CREATION, INSTITUTIONALIZATION AND FUNCTIONING OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION IN BRAZIL: CHARACTERISTICS AND CHALLENGES

ABSTRACT

The resumption of industrial policy to the agenda of the Brazilian government in the early 2000s brings great emphasis to the promotion of the industry-university relationship. In 2004, the Innovation Law was signed, which seeks to make the bureaucratic apparatus more flexible in order to promote these partnerships and establishes the obligation to create Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs), or the Technological Innovation Nuclei (NITs), as called in the Law, in public research institutions. The objective of this paper is to present this policy framework and the instruments of support created, the configuration of NITs in Brazil, to discuss the obstacles and challenges present in its operation and to identify possible learning for public policies. For this, the results of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation survey on NITs (2007-2015) are analyzed, in the light of the results of a field research conducted between 2014 and 2015 and the literature on the subject. It is concluded that, despite the growth of NITs throughout the country, the challenges to their performance are still enormous, as is the need for support for their development.

Industry-University Interaction; Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs; Public Policy; Brazil