1. Why is the Brazilian National System of Innovation concept prescriptive rather than descriptive? Julia Paranhos Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Brazil

2. Main interests  The role of universities on the economic development.  The knowledge and learning dynamics in the industry- university relationship.  Thesis proposal: study on the Pharmaceutical Sector – Intense university-industry linkages  Questions: How does the interaction occurs? What are the knowledge creation and learning processes dynamics? What are the stimuli and the benefits for both players?

3. Paper objective  Analyse Brazilian System of Innovation;  How many companies innovate and what are the government and universities roles;  Compare Brazilian setting of innovation to the characteristics identified by Arocena and Sutz (2005), which indicate that Latin American countries use the NSI concept in a prescriptive way.

4. NSI Concept for North and South Countries “… it may be said that the NSI is an ex post concept which aims at describing syntactically a pre existent reality. On the other hand, in the South where the situations related to the concept are much weaker or inexistent, the NSI is prescriptive rather than descriptive. In other words, it is an ex ante concept” (Arocena & Sutz, 2003, p. 155, our translation).

5. Brazilian setting of innovation  5,378 made product innovations  10,890 made process innovation  11,768 made product and process innovations Data Source: Industrial Survey of Technological Innovation – PINTEC – (2001-2003)  REASONS?

6. First: Government support  Government is supporting modernization, rather than innovation (Arruda et al., 2006).

7. Second: Companies’ finance structure  R&D activities financing

8. Third: Interactions  Brazil represented 1.7% of world publications (Science Citation Index) with 13,328 original papers (2004).  Only 106 Brazilian patents at USPTO in 2004.

9. North Vs. Latin America Source: Arocena and Sutz, 2005.

10. Conclusion  What is the point of talking about National System of Innovation?  Brazilian System of Innovation: Immature (Albuquerque e Sicsú, 2000); Passive Learning System (Viotti, 2002);  Lack of a structural and articulated system to support companies on their search for innovation.

11. Thank you! 4 th Globelics Academy Lisbon, May 2007 e-mail: juliaparanhos@yahoo.com