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Through an investigation of data available from the Brazilian Innovation Survey (Pesquisa de Inovação) of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) and from a national survey on university-firm interactions (the BR Survey), the authors show that Brazilian industrial firms lack qualified individuals for two key activities: the promotion of innovation and the establishment of a dialogue between universities and firms. Brazilian firms' weaknesses and the inadequacy of the workforce supply generate scarce (or inadequate) "know-why." Furthermore, a restricted perspective in Brazilian universities, focused on creating a more educated society rather than augmenting the stock of technological knowledge, constrains the generation of "know-what" and "know-who."

The purpose of this paper is to spatially and regionally examine academic engagement within Brazil, identifying patterns. Moreover, our investigation can contribute to a better understanding of how knowledge can be turned into a tool to fight regional inequality. We depart from two hypotheses: first, universities situated in peripheral regions interact more with companies from relatively more dynamic regions, and second, in the absence of industrial knowledge demand, universities tend to collaborate more closely with a diverse range of stakeholders in the region. To evaluate these hypotheses and find empirical evidence, we consider 4497 research groups and 4603 nonacademic organizations as "nodes" connected by 8830 collaborations throughout all Brazilian regions. Social network tools are used to illustrate the spatial and regional dimensions of academic engagement more accurately. The results show that academic engagement is not regionally homogeneous, demonstrating essential differences regarding local nonacademic partnerships. Innovation policies, which encourage only university–firm interactions, perpetuate regional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The motivation for this article comes from the proposition in the literature that Latin American universities are detached from the research needs of the productive sector and that they limit their role to the human resources and training missions. The authors investigated the Brazilian scenario, using data from a survey conducted in 2008-2009 with universities and firms that interacted with each other. They found that some university-firm interactions in Brazil were diversified and embraced sophisticated knowledge generation and exchange. They also found that interactions with firms reinforced universities' missions of human resources and training provision and generated new knowledge for universities. Brazilian firms themselves have also been changing. They have been increasingly involved in innovative activities and also in more sophisticated interactions with universities.

From an empirical perspective and using some historical elements, we speculate about the role of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in the information and communications technology paradigm in the context of production fragmentation and global value chains and the challenges they impose on learning. We use an evolutionary economics framework to understand the importance of 'learning' in a competitive economy where firms that absorb knowledge increase their opportunities to innovate and to obtain larger market shares. Exploring data from Brazil and South Korea we find similarities in both countries regarding the intellectual property (IP) balance of payments: both have an IP balance of payments deficit. However, data from national IPRs offices shows that residents in South Korea are more apt to generate knowledge than residents in Brazil, which can be attributed to the difference in importance given by these countries to their industrial policies and the way both have integrated global value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]