CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Scholars in Latin America have for more than 50 years recommended developing countries to abandon Natural Resource (NR) and low tech activities and encourage the development of more dynamic technology intensive industries. More recently, however, some authors have claimed that this should be achieved by working with existing capabilities in NRs rather than against them. Accordingly, this paper aims at contributing to better understand innovation in Natural Resourced based industries (NRBI). We focus on the seed industry in Argentina and Brazil. Both countries have expanded production massively recently, have pioneered the adoption of agricultural technology intensive inputs and have increase the rate of seed innovation rather significantly. Despite the importance of a small number of MNCs in providing some standardized technological solutions contained in the seeds, some domestic enterprises and institutions in the region are playing a central role in the development of these innovations. As the strategies of foreign MNCs have been analysed in detail elsewhere, we focused mainly in the domestic firms in developing countries which have been successful. We investigated domestic seed companies to understand how they have gained significant shares in the domestic markets: we analyse the type of innovations they develop, which specific markets and needs they cater, with which R&D strategies and with which type of organization. Results suggest that there are important opportunities for innovation and creating new directions of innovation in NRBI. Results have implications both for the understanding of innovation activities in NRBI in developing countries and for the design of policies to support local natural resource-based companies.

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