University-Industry interaction and Open Innovation Intermediated by Industrial Associations

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In the present Brazilian context, in which the promise of "emerging economy" and economic growth are reshaped as a kind of illusion, the Brazilian Innovation System requires revision to follow the learning process for adjustments. A simple copy of other countries systems or models would not suffice. We need to discuss its contextual issues… Significant has been the previous public spending/investments to make the Brazilian Industry competitive. However, how this concept of “competitiveness” was defined, or understood by the actors in this system? How these diversified and sometimes divergent understandings of the competitiveness results in the systems’ efficiency? The system is complex and, hence, needs, different perspectives of the analysis. In this paper we present a short contribution to this discussion, trying to capture the cultural aspects of the theoretically high-tech industrial segments in Brazil. They discuss a lot about innovation- how they consider “innovation”? How they are intending to deal with “innovation”? I hope this article promote further discussion about the efficiency of the innovation systems. The efficiency would be achieved just by a real integration and acknowledgement of all agents about their role in the learning cycle for system improvement. Those agents comprise not just politicians and public policy agents, but also professionals from the industry, researchers from both the industry and academia, industry representatives, managers, and every citizen.

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