Public Policies on Innovation and Small Businesses in a Swinging Economy

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the adequacy of public policies that support innovation in small businesses in a swinging economy, particularly in Brazil. 1 In order to make our case for more adequate public policies on innovation, we develop five propositions based on the assumption that innovation policies focused on fostering socioeconomic development should meet. We adopted a documentary research design, as we examined the policies produced by governmental bodies and agencies at the three governmental levels in Brazil-federation, states, and cities. Also, qualitative content analysis was performed in order to organize, codify and interpret the messages delivered by current innovation policies in the country. We found that most public policies on innovation and small businesses are shortsighted and generalist, borrowing metrics and evaluation criteria from the big enterprise context in an one-size-fits-all manner that, ultimately, cannot be applied to most small businesses and local contexts. As a contribution to theory, our five propositions could be used as starting points for future policy and administration research. On a practical level, we propose recommendations to policy-makers and offer insights on how an adequate policy affects a country's competitiveness and socioeconomic development.

Orchestration of innovative networks in public policies: The Economic Clusters of Innovation Program from the Government of The State of Ceará

“…Due to different perspectives on innovation and public policy-making, various ways and approaches have been developed to define and categorize innovative policy. However, authors such as Edquist (2011), Audretsch and Link (2012), Bajmócy and Gébert (2014), Silva, Serio and Bezerra (2022) define innovative policy as a series of government activities in the form of plans, programs, projects or actions aimed at fomenting innovation.…”

Innovation policy and public funding to stimulate innovation in knowledge intensive companies: the influence of human and social capital

“…They mention three types of innovation policies: mission-oriented policies, which aim to provide new solutions for specific challenges of the political agenda (Ergas, 1987); invention policies, with a narrower focus, as they focus on R&D activities and transfer invention's exploration and diffusion to the market; and JSTPM 15,2 system-oriented policies, which regard system-level resources, such as the degree of interaction between different parts of the system. Silva et al (2019) carried out a study on innovation regarding public policies applied to small businesses. They argue that there are few public policies addressed to innovation at these firms, and that the academy also pays little attention to them.…”

“…Another problem is that public policies are more evaluated for their efficiency than for their focus and direction. Thus, evaluation metrics regarding how to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of public policies tend to be investigated, whereas there is little debate on the formulation of the policies themselves (Ergas, 1987;Patanakul and Pinto, 2014;Silva et al, 2019). Hence, many public policies are designed based on parameters used by economic theory (productivity, economic growth and job creation) and are often not applicable for the reason they were created.…”

Product development process of a digital irrigameter: a water sizing proposal for sprinkler irrigation process in different cultures

“…Currently, the use of innovation processes to solve daily problems has become recurrent [28]. As a result, one of the problems experienced by the population corresponds to the lack of water, mainly in regions with a dry climate [27,29]. As for the consumption of this resource, there are several possibilities for its optimization that use innovative practices [30].…”