3 in 1: What has changed in Brazil’s innovation scene in the last ten years and what to expect from the next decade?

“With the government, there has been a significant evolution regarding legislation and funding, including the notion that the natural risk innovation brings must be shared with the companies. Awareness about the importance of engineers has also increased. The national education program Science Without Borders also strengthens the quality of those professionals. Another thing is the understanding that resources must be assigned to areas with expressive or inherent advantage, like what happened to chemists with the renewables. From the next decade, I expect the evolution of innovation management in mid and small-sized companies, as well as improvement of relationships between universities and companies.”

“The Brazilian market is now more open to global products and companies started to identify more effectively the market’s needs and accelerate the development of new products. It took a decade of transformations for the companies to learn the importance of involving research centers and universities in its R&D departments. That was the start of the concept of open innovation in Brazil. For the next decade, even companies with structured R&D departments will need to improve and it’ll be crucial to create an ecosystem around the development of intelligent solutions. The combination of innovation and brand reputation is what will guarantee businesses sustainability.”

“The last decade in Brazil was marked by a significant increase, both quantitatively and qualitatively, of government incentive mechanisms to R,D and I. Institutions have become stronger, which contributed to increase, diversify and internationalize partnerships between research institutes, universities and companies. In general, companies have now more confidence in the system and started to use it more frequently. Changes happen really fast, and that forces companies to engage in co-creation. In that context, we could wait more partnerships and collaborative experiences that should be increasingly multidisciplinary and multifunctional.”