Resumo

Innovation public policy can strengthen the capacity of innovation and interaction between actors in the system, facilitate the flow of knowledge and technology, and stimulate companies to consider innovation as one of the key aspects of their business strategy. In less than two decades, there have been advances in Brazilian public policy to foster innovation, although some researchers point out much is still to be implemented in terms of a systemic view. Then, we argue that is needed a deeper understanding of the impacts of some variables of the ongoing Brazilian policy.

This paper aims at exploring the relationship between the Brazilian public policy to foster innovation (i) with the implementation of innovation in products and processes by the companies, as well as (ii) with the companies’ cooperation with external actors in innovation activities.

In times of fiscal constraints, it should be established priorities in order to tackle the main challenges in promoting innovation.Most of these broad priorities appear to be included in Brazilian public policy to foster innovation, although the systemic view of the policy, the intensity and applicability of the tools that allow it to be effectively implemented seems still an issue to be solved. The resumption of industrial policy in Brazil in 2000 decade included innovation as a key variable for increasing the competitiveness of the productive base.

It employs econometric methodologies to analyse data from Brazilian Innovation Survey (PINTEC – Pesquisa de Inovacao) that covers 2006 to 2014 period. Models were built using Structural Equation (SE) technique and validated by using a series of statistical measures: Chi-Square Statistics, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA), Standardised Root Mean Squared Residual (SRMR), and Comparative Fit Index (CFI). An additional test, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), was also employed.

The variables that measure the levels of cooperation among companies and external actors, especially suppliers and universities and research institutes, is associated with public efforts to innovate. Both results are consistent with the three tested models.When the participation of private funds, as liabilities, is analysed, the results go in a different direction. It suggests that the innovation public policy is not encouraging the increase in ST&I from private sources.the additional tests employed suggests a decline in the average use of private sources by firms in innovative activities.

The results showed that the Brazilian public policy to foster innovation has a consistent association with innovation in products and processes for the Brazilian market for the period from 2006 to 2014. The results also point out a dependency between product development and innovation in processes for the Brazilian market, what can suggest that companies are not implementing innovation just in order to reduce production and commercialization costs but to support the development of new products.

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