TECHNOLOGICAL REGIMES AND PATTERNS OF INNOVATION IN THE BRAZILIAN FOOD INDUSTRY

Abstract

The works by Abramovitz (1956) and Solow (1957), showing the impact of technological change on economic growth, underline the birth of a great interest in the field of economics related to the determinants of innovation, at the industry and the firm levels. Hence, this paper assembled a conceptual framework aiming to identify the relationship between patterns of innovation and technological regimes. It is based on the information collected through a survey on technological innovation in a sample of 242 food firms at the Brazilian industry. The study identified three clusters of innovating firms, which display similar patterns of innovation. Two overall conclusions are suggested. First, technological regime, defined as the result of a particular combination of major technological features, including knowledge bases, sources and degrees of technological opportunities, conditions of appropriability and forms and degrees of cumulativeness of technological advances, operates as a source of homogeneity, making up groups of innovating firms in terms of broad regularities in innovative activities. Second, since diverse patterns of innovation can be realized in the food industry, this industry should not be reduced to one analytical category in terms of technological environment. Hence, the main theoretical implication of the findings is that technological regimes are also firm specific. In other words, firms’ resources and capabilities mediate the influence of technological regime on pattern of innovation. Finally, the study confirms the existence of features in firms’ innovative activity that prevails over industrial or sectoral classification.