Sistema Nacional de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação; infraestrutura científica e tecnológica: estudo sobre as instituições de pesquisa do MCTI

Abstract

The importance of science, technology and innovation activities for economic and social development has dominated the intellectual and political contemporary debate in most countries. It is the strengthening of the resources available to encourage the processes of knowledge production and innovation as a strategy to promote sustainable development of cities, regions and nations in an increasingly competitive and globalized capitalism. From an in-depth analysis of the current situation of the National System of Science, Technology and Innovation (SNCTI), in Brazil, the overall objective of this thesis is to investigate the role of public research institutions in the consolidation of the system. To this end, the research was based upon a multidisciplinary theoretical approach over innovation and development systems, from which three central assumptions were established: i) currently, the development of the nations is strongly correlated to the degree of maturity of their innovation systems; ii) Brazil is a country of late industrialization that has not yet a fully consolidated national innovation system; iii) public research institutions are prone to play an increasingly important role in the institutional structure of support to scientific and technological learning in developing countries. The diagnosis of the SNCTI delineated and analyzed in the second part of the thesis reveals the existence of serious obstacles that inhibit its development, especially: low educational level of the population; large regional inequalities; little private investment in R & D, reduced number of researchers in companies and very low levels of technological innovation in firms Despite these limitations, in recent decades, there have been major advances, especially the consolidation of a robust system of research and higher education programmes, the growth of the national scientific production and the formation of a core innovative companies in the industrial sector. The third part of the thesis, on the role of public research institutions in this context, originated from a project conducted by the Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation (MCTI), aimed to map the research infrastructure of the Brazilian scientific and technological institutions. The adopted methodology involved the design of a specific questionnaire, which was sent to the coordinators of all laboratories and research infrastructure attached to MCTI. The analysis of the results was conducted on information from 248 laboratories / infrastructure of 21 institutions that participated in the survey. The research contributes to enlarge the available knowledge about these institutions and reveals that, depending on their respective missions, features and potential drawbacks, such institutions can play different roles in the sustainable development of the country.