Journal of Technology Management & Innovation (Aug 2006)
Experiências de Apoio à Inovação Tecnológica Setorial
Abstract
Since 1999, Brazil has made use of an important instrument to support Science, Technology & Innovation (ST&I) which is the sector-specific funds policy that currently supports twelve sectors of the economy. Experiences that consider investment of federal research funds have been employed since the 1980´s. The Fifth Generation Project, in Japan, the Alvey Program, in the United Kingdom, and the Small Business Innovation Research Program, in the United States, are some examples found abroad. In Brazil, before the Sector Funds policy has been created the Program of Scientific and Technological Support, dedicated to improving the development of high priority sectors. This article deals with some of these important programs, showing that such experiences did not happen without a theoretical basis, since the sector-specific funds already been diffused through the economic literature, which has Nelson and Winter (1982), Dosi (1982) and Pavitt (1984) as precursory.