Innovation systems and local productive arrangements: new strategies to promote the generation, acquisition and diffusion of knowledge.

SUMMARY

The turn of the millennium has been characterized by a high intensity of changes with significant economic, social and political impacts. The emergence of a knowledge economy presents opportunities and challenges for countries, regions, organizations and individuals. The paper starts by focusing on the main features of the new pattern of accumulation and the acceleration of the globalization process, focusing particularly on their impacts for those less developed countries. Three main challenges are particularly addressed. The first is that several mismatches have resulted from the confrontation between the emergence of a new reality and the attempt to understand and orient it by using old conceptual analytical and normative models. The second refers to the need for new theoretical, analytical and normative frameworks to deal with this new reality. The third relates to the difficulties of stimulating and motivating the processes of creation, use and diffusion of knowledge and innovation in development conditions.

To deal with the new mode of organizing production and innovative activities a wide range of methodological frameworks has been used. The paper reviews some of the most important, and centrally discusses the contribution of the concepts of innovation systems and of local production and innovation systems arrangements, as developed by a research network based in Brazil. Among the main advantages of these concepts addressed in the paper are: (i) the focus on learning, on building capabilities, on the localness of tacit knowledge, on the interaction between agents, on the role of different local and national contexts; as well as (ii) the importance of taking into account the power and international relations that affect the dynamics of local systems. Two main reasons emphasize the relevance of policy proposals to mobilize local productive and innovative systems. First, is the need to identify and design policies that take into account local specific requirements. The second refers to the importance of mobilizing the set of interdependent agents in their environment and of articulating different policy objectives and levels: local, regional, national and even supranational.

KEYWORDS

knowledge economy; systems of innovation; industrial and technology policies; development; local requires; international interactions

INTRODUCTION

This work departs from three related considerations. First is that periods of transformations--such as the one that marked the turn of the millennium--require public and private strategies and policies adjusted to the new reality that are also capable of orienting the direction and intensity of changes. The second refers to the recognition that these periods are also characterized by greater uncertainty and difficulty in understanding the essence of the emerging situation. The third relates to the importance of advancing the understanding of the nature of this transition and of its potential impacts, what implies the need to develop new ways of capturing, measuring and evaluating its nature and distinctiveness.

The paper starts by discussing the peculiarities of the present pattern of accumulation and the set of opportunities and challenges associated to its emergence and diffusion. It aims at examining the conditions and requirements for designing industrial and technological policies. This discussion stresses particularly the point of view of a less developed country (LDC). Within this context, the paper presents and discusses the concepts of innovation systems and of local production and innovation systems and arrangements as developed in Brazil by the Research Network on Local Productive and Innovative Systems--RedeSist. (1) Then it discusses the need for policies adjusted to the new reality--and that are capable of dealing with the challenges and opportunities it brings--exploring the main advantages of this concept, both as an analytical unity and as a focal point of new policies for acquiring, using and diffusing knowledge in productive structures. In its final part, the paper alerts for the risk of annulling the reach of new policy approaches by using half-baked ideas, which are quickly implemented for the sake of getting hold of political spaces and access to new funds.

KNOWLEDGE-INTENSIVE, DEMATERIALIZED AND FINANCIARIZED PATTERN OF ACCUMULATION

A growing intensity and complexity of knowledge and its increasing incorporation in goods and services are usually considered as a marked characteristic of the present accumulation regime. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) play a central role in the new regime leveraging a set of innovations and generating new possibilities of economic return in different activities. That is why they are regarded the main diffusers of technical progress.

The diffusion of the new regime is accompanied by new practices and organizational formats of:

* production, commercialization and consumption of a variety of goods and services;

* forming and training, research and development (R&D);

* cooperation and competition;

* circulation and valorization of capital;

* financing and promoting industrial and technological development.

It is recognized that a distinctive feature of the new pattern is its contribution to sort out two related problems of the previous regime: the escalating dependence of production on nonrenewable resources, namely mineral and energy resources; and the continuation of mass production and consumption system and its consequent mass discharge of waste. Among the new possibilities brought by the ICT paradigm is the tendency towards de-materialization of new products. That is, the decrease in the intensity of use of material components in the production and commercialization of goods and services. As in the case of software that can be developed, produced, acquired, distributed, consumed and discharged without necessarily involving the creation of new material forms. It is in this sense, that it has been argued that one of the advantages of the ICT paradigm is that it offers new fronts to make viable the mass production, consumption and discharge of intangible goods and services. It is also worth stressing the association between the development and diffusion of these new technologies and the acceleration of the financiarization of the economy. (2)

Therefore, the diffusion of the new paradigm may be contributing to open up new alternatives to the energy and material-intensive mass-production (and highly polluting) Fordist paradigm of the 1950s and 1960s. However, at the same time, it also presents new challenges for firms, sectors, countries and people, particularly those in the less developed regions. Firstly, it is important to emphasize that--while former patterns of accumulation relied more directly on natural resources, randomly dispersed in the world--a knowledge-intensive paradigm, reinforces the hegemony of the most advanced countries and organizations. (3) Secondly, are the increasing pressures to appropriate, control and trade information and knowledge.

Together with the advancement of the dematerialization of the economy, the speeding up of the generation and codification of knowledge is observed. Nevertheless, its tacit component has also grown in importance and the transfer of tacit knowledge continues to be extremely difficult since its nature is associated with learning processes that are dependent on specific contexts and forms of social interaction. Therefore, even if the rapid diffusion of ICT implies greater possibilities for codification and transmission of this knowledge (information), tacit knowledge remains important since it is essential to decode it.

NETWORKS TO STIMULATE AND PROTECT KNOWLEDGE

The expansion of networks and the setting up of virtual communities is observed. Information and communication technologies and systems also introduce a new logic of territorial evolution, widening up the importance of the informational space. Organizational formats that privilege interaction and joint work of different agents are the most significant organizational innovation associated to the diffusion of the net pattern. These new formats assume a particular importance, favoring processes that are crucial for the generation, acquisition, use and diffusion of knowledge and innovations.

On one hand, a trend towards greater integration of different functions and units within the same organization has been noticed. On the other, new patterns of cooperation and competition are found. This involve the interconnection of all kinds of firms--producers, suppliers of raw materials and inputs, trade companies and services suppliers--and also other organizations. It is important to point out that such formats can potentially help to organize and gather capabilities and accumulated knowledge. At the same time they make easier to shield them from unwelcome outsiders. Then, the proliferation of R&D, production and commercialization networks can be seen as an answer to the need both to stimulate and to protect the tacit knowledge that is generated and that circulates inside these networks, transforming them in part of the space and a space of parts (Santos, 2001).