SUBSIDIARIES INVOLVEMENT IN TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF TELECOMMUNICATION INDUSTRY: RESULTS FROM S&T INDICATORS

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse and measure the results related to the participation of Brazilian subsidiaries of foreign telecommunication suppliers in the Global Product Development processes of these companies. Considering this main goal, it is presented a quantitative analysis on the involvement in technological development by subsidiaries of transnational telecommunication equipment suppliers, especially the Brazilian units, using two indicators of science and technology: patents and bibliometric data. Similar data were also collected for other developing countries that directly compete with Brazil in the telecommunication sector. For patents, it was considered international and national databases by analysing patents issued by companies. The North-American USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) was used mainly to analyse participation of Brazilian inventors in patents applied internationally. And, of course, for national analysis it was used data from the Brazilian institute of intellectual property (INPI - Instituto Nacional de Propriedade Intelectual). Bibliometric data searches were made from SCI (Science Citation Index), a North-American database edited by ISI (Institute for Scientific Information), which includes different knowledge areas. This combination between patents and bibliometric data intends to widely cover R&D activities, once patents are concerned with applying research and experimental development (for later production and commercialisation of products), and scientific publications are usually related to basic or applied research. The examination of these data was enriched with information from previous qualitative researches, which evidenced some public policies to stimulate local technological activities in the companies studied. However, it is possible to conclude from the quantitative results that the involvement of Brazilian subsidiaries is inferior when compared to the involvement of other analysed developing countries. The situation is worse when the results of these countries are compared to those of developed countries.