Analyzing Inclusive Innovation Strategies. Learnings and Constrains for South America

MARIANO FRESSOLI; RAFAEL DIAS; HERNÁN THOMAS

Hangzhou

Conferencia; 10th Globelics Conference; 2012

Zhejian University, Tongji University

While there seems to be a consensus about the need to redirect some of the innovation efforts towards the construction of responses to the pressing issues of poverty and social exclusion, it is still unclear what the best ideas, strategies and institutional designs would be in order to achieve this objective. The particular motivations that drive actors towards this common goal are also plural and frequently ambiguous. While some of these initiatives arose with the aim of empowering people?s access to science and technology and democratizing its uses and policies, others regard pro-poor innovation as a way to create new markets by translating informal into formal, capitalist economies. Therefore, the issue of innovation and inclusive development has become a contested space where several actors are advocating their own visions, strategies and networks. Obviously, this growing debate will (and already has) enrich ideas and projects about innovation and development in South America and around the world. But, as in other cases (see Varsavsky, 1969), there is also a risk that the linear adoption of these visions by policy makers in S&T might generate distorted strategies, unsuitable for the region. Adopting ideas in innovation and development designed for different situation could easily disrupt emerging local alternatives, networks and strategies. Attention to this dilemma is important, since although those experimental spaces are flourishing, most of them, like the Social Technology Network in Brazil and Technology for Social Inclusion Network in Argentina, are still fragile and marginal actors -especially regarding more established S&T institutions. This paper explores two different theoretical approaches on the subject that have, to different extents, influenced the emergent movement towards inclusive innovation in Latin America: the ?grassroots innovation? approach proposed chiefly by A. Gupta and the ?base of the pyramid? approach, derived from the works of C. K. Prahalad. A review of key works by these authors, based on a socio-technical perspective, was conducted. We have emphasized the theoretical elements and the strategies these perspectives suggest, the socio-technical alliances they favor (or may favor) and the proposals of technical change and social inclusion they promote. We expect the analysis of these elements to provide a critical description of these two approaches, while also stressing their potentialities and limits. Finally, in the light of similar experiences in Argentina and Brazil, we provide brief recommendations for the design of new public policies on science, technology and social inclusion in Latin America.