Arranjos institucionais para inovação tecnológica do polo de defesa e segurança de Santa Maria – RS

Abstract

The construction of a Defense and Security Center in Santa Maria – RS, formally from 2014, had as its starting point the possibility of creating a suitable environment to new demands, technologies and businesses related to Defense. In this sense, this work seeks to understand how the institutional environment of the Defense and Security Center, considering a possible Triple Helix – State, Universities and Private Sector –, influences in the generation and diffusion of technological innovations in the Defense field. The hypothesis is that there are processes of knowledge generation (in the universities) and that they are transferred to the Armed Forces, however, the overflow of this knowledge to the local firms – in the format of technological innovations – is limited by the incipient institutional arrangements of the Center. The studies about the institutional arrangements related to the Defense industry are necessary due to their relevance regarding the sustainability of this type of industry: in Brazil, the importance performed by the social relations concerning the development of an engaged industrial Defense base in accordance with the civil society is not yet understood. In addition, the discussion about the possibility of generating and diffusing the technological innovations within the scope of the Center (i.e., in the Defense field and in Santa Maria – RS) has not yet been discussed academically. Based on this scenario, the specific objectives of the present work are: i) to understand how the technological innovations in the Defense field arise, considering the systemic model and the appropriate institutional environment; ii) to discuss the fundamental issues that surround the implementation of a Defense and Security Center in Santa Maria – RS, such as: the importance of Brazil's Defense Industrial Base (taking into account the characteristics and the historical and cultural heritage of the city of Santa Maria – RS) and the construction of the Center itself; and iii) to analyze the institutional arrangements of the Center to build matrices based on Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT), as well as to evaluate the variables that surround these arrangements, such as autonomy, authority, acquiescence, consequence, coherence and convergence. For this, the hypothetical-deductive approach was used alongside the case study as a procedure method. Additionally, after the bibliographical research, data were collected from semi-structured interviews with the agents that act – directly or indirectly within the scope of the Center – to collect not yet available information about the creation of a Triple Helix in Santa Maria – RS. The Center is incipient and faces many challenges associated with the emergence of this fertile environment. The institutional arrangements for technological innovation of the Center are still, in practice, non-existent.