Fomentar a inovação para o Brasil voltar a crescer

By Jamile Sabatini Marques, Director of Innovation and Promotion at ABES

Innovation generates competitiveness in the national and international market, creates new markets and generates new forms of consumption. The promotion of innovation is one of the fundamental ways for Brazil to grow again.

The Austrian Joseph Schumpeter, (1911), economist and political scientist, already demonstrated the importance of fostering the innovative entrepreneur - one who creates new markets and job opportunities and promotes economic development.

Banks and development agencies can foster innovation with more attractive financing and rates, improving forms of guarantees and being more flexible and compatible with the knowledge era. Even today, banks continue with the industrial age mentality with regard to guarantees, which prevents smaller companies from accessing finance. Today, there are few lines of support for MSMEs (micro, small and medium-sized companies), and they already represent more than 90% of Brazilian companies.

The country needs to be alert to the transformation we are experiencing in terms of consumption, which are changing very quickly and the Brazilian market needs to be aware of this movement. When we realize that today we watch a movie, listen to a song, take a taxi, communicate in a different way than we did 10 years ago, we have to stop to reflect on these changes and give opportunities to Brazilian entrepreneurs who also create and become competitive. Today, we are users of many foreign technologies like Netflix, Spotify, Uber and WhatsAp) which are cases of disruption.

Within this idea, it is necessary to encourage qualified labor in order to create new entrepreneurs and meet the demands of companies that are already in the market. It is also essential for the development of the country, to bring the academy closer to MSMEs so that specialists can contribute to the generation of new products.

Countries that are attentive to this issue invest from 2.3% to 4.2% of their GDP as a way of being increasingly competitive and gaining worldwide space.

Today, Brazil invests less than 1% of its GDP in research and development. When these investments increase, we will have a more prosperous and more competitive country in the world.

This framework means that from knowledge people create their products and services. Entrepreneurs need support to develop and bring their creativity to the market. When they reach the market, they move from creativity to innovation and consequently become more competitive, as they generate new markets and new forms of consumption and, as a result, generate knowledge-based economic development (DEBC).

Jamile Sabatini Marques, director of Innovation and Promotion of the Brazilian Association of Software Companies - ABES, has already worked in some programs to foster innovation. Post-doctorate in Knowledge-Based Development at UFSC and also post-doctorate at the Institute for Advanced Studies at USP. She holds a PhD in Engineering and Knowledge Management from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, where she defended her thesis on the importance of fostering Innovation to generate economic development based on Knowledge.