| dc.description.abstract | This thesis examines the evolution and development of science, technology and
innovation (STI) policies in Colombia as a particular case study of a developing
country within the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) Region. The initial stage of
the research analysed attempts by Colombian policy-makers from the 1960s onwards
to build a National System of Innovation (NSI), following recommendations from
transnational organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and
Development and the Organisation of American States. This investigation found little
evidence of systemic relationships between public, industrial and academic
organisations to generate, exchange and apply knowledge. Central to these
innovation strategies was a focus upon funding research with public resources to
strengthen knowledge generation as the main mechanism for promoting innovation.
This suggested that, although the STI policy was formally defined as following a
‘systemic’ approach, the policy mix reflected a linear reading of innovation (Tait &
Williams, 1999) and generated an unhelpful (mis)perception of an uptake lag
(Brown, Gregson, & Mason, 2015). The study was therefore refocused to develop a
bottom-up understanding of innovation in selected industrial settings. A detailed
analysis was undertaken of the innovation arrangements in three key Colombian
agricultural industries - coffee, flower and sugarcane - within the national economy
and global supply chains. This is an exploratory qualitative research based upon
semi-structured interviews and specialised focus groups with key academic, public
and private actors related with the evolution, design and application of innovation
policies and strategies at the national and sectoral levels, supported by analysis of
published and unpublished literature.
Moving beyond narrow Innovation Systems (IS) perspectives, this thesis brought
together aspects of STI policy design with an analysis of formal and informal social,
economic and political institutions. A detailed focus on specificities of the three ISs
under study highlighted important differences in terms of the generation and
exploitation of knowledge linked to differences in inter-organisational relationships
within the sub-sectors and their governance and governability. This in turn pointed tothe importance of cultural factors shaping innovation dynamics and the co-evolution
of sectoral actors with technical, organisational and market changes. These findings
suggest a top-down and bottom-up approach to understanding how national
innovation strategy can be embedded in firms and industries.
This thesis makes three contributions to knowledge. Firstly, it contributes to theories
of sectoral innovation systems - showing that even at the sub-sectoral level, there are
very different innovation pathways depending upon ownership, trading relations,
scale, political insertion, longevity, sources and cumulativeness of knowledge. This
reinforces the need for NSI to be grounded in broader historical and sociological
understanding. Secondly, the operation of (de facto) innovation systems needs to be
understood through a broad analysis of the embedded institutions and the power
dynamics between the actors involved in the system. We suggest that the NSI
approach might usefully be reconnected with earlier Latin American intellectual
approaches that took into account the particularities of local/national industrial and
knowledge institutions and the insertion of the LAC economies into global trading
systems. Finally, it provides a critical appraisal of how the NSI approach can be read
and understood by political actors to justify and shape particular policy mixes that
encourage a narrow focus on the promotion and exploitation of public sector research
based upon linear models of innovation. | en |
