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The purpose of this paper is to show that the wide acknowledgement of the association between innovation and economic and social development and of the importance of innovation policies has formed a kind of “misty consensus” hardly contested in Brazil. However, the innovation policies adopted in the country lack an institutional framework to support their implementation, marking what is called in this paper a “messy dissensus”.

It is argued that the reasons why the science, technology and innovation (ST&I) policies have failed to contribute more effectively increasing Brazilian technological efforts have less to do with the policies themselves and more to do with their detachment from the institutional framework used to implement them.

It is shown that this institutional framework: (i) is barely adherent to the perception of the systemic nature of the innovation process; (ii) does not create enough incentives for bureaucrats in public institutions to allocate resources in the industrial sector; (iii) encourages the pulverization of resources and the consequent loss of focus, which may reduce the efficiency of the adopted policies; (iv) encourages the replication of models and priorities usually adopted in contexts that fail to match the Brazilian reality.

In this paper, the focus is on the obstacles that undermine the potential of ST&I policies to contribute more effectively to the improvement of the Brazilian innovation indicators. It is argued that these obstacles have less to do with the innovation policies themselves and more to do with their detachment from the institutional framework used to implement them. This institutional framework includes not only the formal and legal rules but also informal social norms that govern individual behavior and structure social interactions.

This paper evaluates the effects of tax incentives on business innovation in Brazil that were established by Law 11,196/05 (the “Fiscal Incentives Law”) to test whether they have had a positive impact on beneficiary firms' innovation input and output and on their performance.

The policy impacts are estimated using microdata on 13,706 firms available in the 2008 and 2011 editions of the Brazilian Innovation Survey (PINTEC) and by applying propensity score matching with difference-in-differences.

The results suggest a positive and statistically significant impact of the policy on research and development (R&D) expenditures (average of approximately US$ 264,000 in 2011), the number of research staff (average of five researchers) and total employment (approximately 5% of the beneficiary firms' mean size). However, no impact was found on the overall spending on innovative activities, the percentage of sales and exports from new products, net revenue or net revenue per employee.

The findings provide empirical support in favor of tax incentives as a policy tool to boost business innovation in the country. However, the absence of significant effects on innovative activities expenditures and on most indicators of innovation output and firms' performance reveals shortcomings of the policy that need to be addressed.

The study complements and advances the findings of previous studies by assessing policy impact on total innovative activities expenditures and on innovation output and firm performance.

Due to dramatic transformation of the auto industry, governments are implementing innovation policies to ensure the domain of sustainable technologies. According to the literature, developing countries that depend on multinational subsidiaries must invest in complementary innovation to be part of their research and development (R&D) headquarters' long-term plans. This study analyses the Brazilian auto industry innovation policy (Rota 2030) to evaluate if it targets complementarity with the German's one (NPE). It also compares the institutional arrangements of the former against the latter to check for governance gaps.

It applies a case-oriented comparative method (Ragin, 2014) for the analysis of qualitative evidence on secondary data. It investigates evidence of complementarity between Rota 2030 and national platform for electric mobility (NPE) objectives and checks for governance gaps in Rota 2030 using NPE as a reference.

The results confirmed a loose fitting between the innovation policies mainly for a lack of determinism of Rota 2030 objectives. Governance gaps were also found on Rota 2030 policy formulation and operationalization.

It contributes for the improvement of Rota 2030, and its analytical frame may be used for the formulation or adjustment of other developing countries' innovation policies.

It contributes with innovation system and policy field development with a theoretical extension coming from the New Institutional Economics (NIE) (Menard, 2018). By examining the performance of “institutional arrangements” during the process of formulation and operationalization of innovation policies, it shows the importance of coordination for their effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how knowledge management and university-industry-government collaboration – including the triple helix – relate with each other in influencing organizations’ performance. In the competitive environment nowadays, an organization’s ability to create and use knowledge becomes ever more essential in the search for sustainable competitive advantage, even leading to the search for new forms of inter-organizational arrangements.

The representatives of such collaborations selected for this study are the National Institutes of Science and Technology. The categorical content analysis technique was used for the qualitative analysis of the data.

The principal contribution was the proposal of an analytical model relating the knowledge management and triple helix theories and the proposed dimensions (namely, structural, relational, cognitive and the context), considering the peculiarities of the Brazilian context. The findings show that the organizational structure (structural) influences not only the relationship among members (relational) but also the flow of knowledge (cognitive), as well as how relational elements (collaborative culture, trust and leadership) facilitate knowledge sharing. Moreover, the context affects these three other dimensions. The main obstacles identified were cultural differences, bureaucracy and the socio-economic reality, while facilitators were the existence of technology parks and incubators, government incentives and geographical proximity between universities and industry.

This topic was chosen as there are few empirical studies that comprehensively relate the topics of knowledge management and university-industry-government cooperation focusing on the Brazilian context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the academic side of university–firm linkages, reporting the results of research (called the “BR Survey”, a primary database) conducted in Brazil with leaders of research groups that interacted with firms. The authors analysed the answers from 662 research groups (from both universities and research institutes) to investigate whether the intensity of private funds affects the results of the interactions. The main intent is to answer the following question: Is there a difference between funding sources and the type of results achieved by research groups when interacting with firms?

To verify the impact of some variables on the perception of the main results of university–firm interactions, highlighting the impact of funding sources, the authors present a Logit Model defined with binary dependent variables. The null value is categorized as a “scientific result” (new scientific discoveries and research projects; publications, theses and dissertations; human resources’ and students’ education) and the value 1 is classified as an “innovative/technological result” (new products, artefacts and processes; improvement of industrial products and processes; patents, software, design and spin-off firms).

The authors found that the modes of interaction (relationship types) and some knowledge transfer channels, besides the number of interactions with firms, have statistically significant coefficients, so their values present different impacts on the results of the interaction. The results suggest that the Brazilian innovation policy towards a more active and entrepreneurial role of universities is fostering innovative/technological results from university–firm interactions.

The originality of the study lies on the results found that given the fact that private funding sources do not affect the conventional mission of Brazilian universities – teaching and research – university research groups should be even more incentivized to search for private funds to carry out their research. This may be a solution to the public fund scarcity and may help in reducing the historical distance between universities and firms in Brazil.

The puropose of this study is to analyze the functioning of the triple helix interaction in Minas Gerais, through the case study of the Minas Gerais State Research Support Foundation (Fapemig).

The information was collected from the Activity Reports published by Fapemig. Quantitative methods were used for structural analysis and data tabulation of the researched and qualitative programs for a procedural and documentary analysis of projects promoted by Fapemig between the years 2009 and 2018.

The Fapemig showed itself to be a fundamental agent for innovation and the development of interactions between the state, universities and companies in Minas Gerais, through the creation of programs, offered in public notices, financing them and creating a space of consensus among the agents.

There is few research on triple helix interaction for the state of Minas Gerais; most research on this topic is concentrated in some regions of the country, and the present work contributes to fill this research gap, besides demonstrating, in a case study, applications of recent and still little-explored concepts of the literature on triple helix.

This study aims to analyze the correlation between the investments in the Brazilian Space Agency (BSA) and the patenting process.

The methodology used was a statistical analysis through correlation and linear regression between the secondary data of investments made by the federal government, retrieved from the Transparency Portal, in the BSA and the patenting process, taking into consideration the number of invention, utility model and certificate of addition of invention.

After a brief presentation of the emergence of innovation and patent applications with the investments of governments in space agencies, this study presents the analysis of information in different times of investment that showed positive correlation between the two variables adopted.

One can point to the value of this study as strategic investments in space agencies to boost the filing of patents in a nation in the most diverse areas.

The chapter analyzed the knowledge transfer processes of the Latin American academy to the actors in its environment, and the Science, Technology, and Innovation policy that facilitates or inhibits the processes of generation and use of this university knowledge. The cases of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico were analyzed to understand the practice of the university knowledge transfer model at different levels – strategic, organizational, and operational – and the complexities involved in the process. It was evidenced by the urgent demand for the transformation of the Latin American University through sustainability and digitalization approaches to be a catalyst for development in the region. The chapter closes with a critical analysis of the phenomenon, future lines of research, and implications of the praxis.