Building capabilities to catch up with the biotechnological paradigm. The role of public policies in the developing countries. Evidence from Latin America Agri-food Systems

GRACIELA E. GUTMAN; PABLO LAVARELLO

Learning, knowledge and innovation: Policy Challenges for the 21st century,

Oxford University Press IPD Series and CEPAL

Año: 2009;

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the relevance of Modern Biotechnology in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, considering the opportunities  for the development of new local innovative capabilities and upgrading processes. These countries have shown important advances in the adoption of MB, the differences between them being associated with the specificities of their natural resource endowment, industrial structure and regulatory context. Two interrelated factors form the base for our central hypotheses relating to the rate and direction of the adoption of Modern Biotechnology in agri-food: i)                    Local scientific and technological progress is associated with the central role of public agencies, such as institutes of science and technology, deliberate upstream public policies in the development and consolidation of scientific disciplines, the generation and adoption of new biotechnological capabilities, and the institutional capabilities developed through public- and private-sector interaction. ii)                   The downstream diffusion of MB is strongly dependent on market incentives, pre-existent technological capabilities in traditional fermentation industries and breeding activities, and on the availability of complementary assets (financial access, commercial networks, managerial capabilities and productive facilities). The methodological approach is in line with an ‘appreciative theory’, aiming to structure qualitative notions about the nature of biotechnological trajectories based on case studies, biotechnological enterprise surveys and science and technology databases (Bisang, Gutman, Lavarello, et al., 2006; CORFO, 2007; Da Silveira, Dal Pozo, and Assad, 2004; Niosi, 2006).