Los desafíos de una agenda regional para el desarrollo. La configuración de un sistema social de innovación en el MERCOSUR. El caso del diseño industrial

LUCIANO BORGOGLIO

Recife

Workshop; Fifth South-South Summer Institute; 2012

Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales - Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa - Asian Political and International Studies Association

In the last decade, within the shift to the (center) left experienced by many Latin American countries, issues relating to regional integration, innovation and cultural diversity, among others, have come back strongly in the State agenda. This occurs in the broader context of a reaffirmation and redefinition of the State's role in the processes of economic, social, cultural and political development of our countries, after the devastating effects of the neoliberal structural reforms imposed during the last two decades of the twentieth century. The line of research that I present aims to link the above issues. Innovation is a development factor highly and increasingly recognized by both the academic literature and the public policies designed and implemented in our region. However, two dimensions have not been sufficiently explored and developed: the regional (the building of a regional innovation system) and the cultural (the recognition of “soft” innovation -as opposed the strictly technological- related to aesthetic and intellectual dimensions of goods and services). All this within an epistemology that problematize the development models received from the North and face the challenges of creating our own in the South, also taking into account of the systemic nature of innovation processes. In this spirit, the key questions to be addressed are: what are the characteristics of the network of actors and institutions related to innovation in industrial design in MERCOSUR’s countries? (with emphasis on Argentina and Uruguay), and what causes and what effects have these characteristics in terms of favoring innovation processes? Finally, what scope is there for supranational coordination of efforts in the matter? After a long period characterized by mass production of standardized products, important changes in socioproductive systems occurred since the ‘70s (first in developed countries, later and quite incompletely in developing countries). They now must meet a demand more focused on diversity, innovation, quality and the symbolic aspects of products. Because of its technological bias, literature on innovation has neglected the symbolic dimension of goods and services and the incorporation of knowledge on such dimension in the production processes. Beyond its cultural impact, an issue widely discussed in the literature, there is a significant vacancy on the modalities of design innovation and its contribution to economic development. Moreover, the strengthening of supranational linkages in the matter could help overcome the relative impasse experienced by regional integration. The activities of this project have their axis in a flexible design methodology based on a triangulation between quantitative and qualitative methods, with emphasis on the latter. Flexibility refers to the possibility of facing unexpected situations during the course of the research, that may involve adopting new techniques of data collection and conceptually developing them in an original way (Mendizabal, 2006). Methodological triangulation, a combination of methods and types of information employed, is in line with the proposals of the Bogotá Manual: "tracking innovative processes should aim not only to know the magnitudes (quantitative aspects) but also the characteristics (qualitative aspects) of these processes, in order to obtain evidence regarding the development path of an economy" (RICYT, 2000. My translation). Triangulation will take the form of complementing and contrasting the perceptions of key actors on the various subsystems (such as the educative, the public policy and the industrial firms, among other subsystems), their linkages and their socioproductive and macroeconomic context, with statistics, documents, regulations and relevant literature on the matter. On the qualitative side, it is about reconstructing the system based on perceptions of actors located in strategic positions in the network of linkages, so that they are able to account for a part or even whole system. Bibliography MENDIZÁBAL, Nora (2006), Los componentes del diseño flexible en la investigación cualitativa. En Estrategias de investigación cualitativa (Irene Vasilachis de Gialdino, coord.), Gedisa, Buenos Aires. RICYT (2000), Manual de Bogotá: Normalización de Indicadores de Innovación Tecnológica en América Latina y el Caribe, RICYT, Bogotá.