Innovation Performance in Brazil – What is Missing? From the Perspective of Micro and Small Technology-Based Firms

Abstract

The present paper approaches one of the most important themes in the business and economic areas since the second half of the 20th century: innovation; in particular for developing countries such as Brazil. For these countries, competitiveness is directly linked to the ability to foster and sustain a higher level of firms´ innovativeness. In Brazil, despite the overall economic and innovation conditions such as the presence of relevant innovation agents (i.e. universities, government, research centres and investors) and access to financing mechanisms as well as public policies which facilitated innovation initiatives have apparently been improved, innovation rates does not take off. So, considering this context, the present paper tried to examine what problems were hampering or inhibiting the improvement and increasing of the level of country´s innovativeness from the perspective of micro and small technology-based firms. The findings showed that there are still some problems such as lack of government support, funds and financing mechanisms as well as high costs of innovation and organizational resistances which play an important role pushing firms not to innovate.