Colaboração em pesquisa e desenvolvimento: um estudo em ambientes de incubadoras e parques científico-tecnológicos

Abstract

Cooperation and inter-organizational complementarity are factors that promote innovation, since individual firms have difficulties on keeping up-to-date, develop and commercialize new products and services. There are many collaboration initiatives being discussed among the private and public spheres to strengthen firm’s innovation capacity. One of those initia-tives, largely stimulated by public policy in Brazil recently, is the support to creation and consolidation of Incubators and Science and Technology Parks (IPCTs). These habitats aim to promote innovation by, among other forms, the resource complementarity and action interde-pendence. Empirical studies, however, are not conclusive on this regard. While some studies indicate that, in certain cases, firms within these habitats collaborate and innovate more intensely than firms outside; others do not corroborate these conclusions. The present thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of this phenomenon, by proposing a theoretical framework to support studies that take innovation and collaboration as theoretical lenses to the study of Science Parks. The results indicate that IPCTs in fact influence collaborative R&D, although not as initially proposed. From the revised version of the theoretical frame-work, it is possible to suggest that in order to promote joint R&D, IPCTs must employ efforts in the articulation of companies and universities to submit projects to government funding bids. Public managers can use the results from this study to direct funding bids and other government tools to incentive collaborative R&D. Companies can also use the results from this study to select adequate innovation environments that fit their strategic needs.