Innovation in LatinAmerica: indicators and surveys

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Innovation in Latin-America indicators and
surveys
RICYT Red Iberoamericana de Indicadoresde
Ciencia y Tecnología
Diana Suárez
Innovation Indicators for Latin America
Workshop19 March, 2009Paris, France
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The LA environment

• Innovative features
• Low ST expenditure
• Low endowment of qualified personnel
• High public expenditure participation
• Low patent rate

• Context
• Unstable macroeconomic environment
• M-L L Tech goods
• Low external insertion

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Developing countries
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Methodological Approach
Macroeconomy
Trajectories
Incentives
Institutional framework
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Strategy
Innovation
Innovative behaviours
Purpose
Impact
Obstacles
Obstacles
Objectives
Innovation Activities
Results
Funding and information
_ _ _ _ _ Innovation System
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Innovation in Latin-American firms
What can we test?

• Results of Innovation activities
• Expenditure on Innovation activities
• RD human resources
• Links, cooperation and sources of information
• Obstacles

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How can we test?
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1. Results

• High product innovator rate but low rate of
  firms that applied for patents,
• Developing countries more process than product
  innovators.

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2. Expenditure

• Low innovation expenditure with high deviations

• Concentrated on capital goods (then innovators)

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3.Human resources in RD

• Even the firms with RD expenditure and
  personnel present low rates of efforts.
• RD expenditure and human resources are not
  enough to understand innovative activities.

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4. Innovative strategies

• Capital goods and RD are the most important
  activities in terms of expenditure,
• But training and engineering and industrial
  design are also important in terms of impact of
  the capital good acquisition.

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5.Links and cooperation
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6. Obstacles
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Summary and conclusions

• Innovative features
• Low, concentrated and heterogeneous innovation
  expenditure
• High rate of innovators but low scope of
  innovations
• Low cooperation rates and contradictory numbers
• Macroeconomic obstacles (uncertainty and funding)

• Implications
• Importance of the subject approach and the
  integrated analysis (IA expenditure vs. RD)
• Simple indicators are not enough (efforts,
  results, scope and impact)
• Deeper analysis of cooperation and links with
  the NIS
• Endogenous vs. exogenous obstacles

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• www.ricyt.org
• dsuarez_at_ricyt.edu.ar