Experts Present Contributions to Brazil’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy
“Brazil has a fantastic institutional wealth, but lacks cooperation among the institutions and agents that promote innovation in the country,” emphasized Marcos Cintra, Vice President of Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), during the opening of the Open Conference on ST&I: Evidence-Based Policies for Science, Technology, and Innovation, held on April 3 in São Paulo. The event gathered members of the National ST&I System with the goal of proposing evidence-based contributions for the sector’s new policy.
The proposals presented during this Open Conference contribute to the development of a new National Strategy for Science, Technology, and Innovation (ENCTI) in Brazil and are part of the preparation for the 5th National Conference on ST&I, which will take place from June 4 to 6 in Brasília (DF).
You can watch the full panels from the Conference [at this link].
To view the presentations and the respective proposals for the new ST&I policy, [click here].
Proposals for Governance of ST&I Initiatives
The first panel of the Conference discussed the governance of the ST&I system and the coordination of initiatives by funding bodies and financing agencies operating in the sector. According to Alvaro Prata, Director of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC), science should guide all national decisions at the executive level, supporting actions across various ministries.
“You can’t make decisions in areas like the environment, health, infrastructure, or public safety without basing them on science,” said Prata. The professor and former rector of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) proposed a restructuring of ministries to give more centrality to science, technology, and innovation actions, based on the book Science for Prosperity, published by the Brazilian Company for Industrial Research and Innovation (Embrapii).
Prata also proposed the creation of a new role—Strategic ST&I Advisors—to participate in the Legislative, Judiciary, and especially the Executive branches. In this system, each ministry would have a strategic ST&I advisor working in coordination with the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MCTI), ensuring that decisions across various sectors are based on scientific evidence.
Next, Eliete Bouskela, President of the National Academy of Medicine (ANM), highlighted the need for industries to absorb master’s and PhD graduates, pointing to the example of other countries. “In Sweden, for instance, industries are often located near universities to foster greater dialogue between academia and industry,” said Bouskela, the first woman to serve as ANM president in its 195-year history.
Jorge Guimarães, Emeritus Professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), argued that Brazil’s secondary and higher education models need to be restructured to increase the supply of highly qualified professionals in the labor market. “We also need to reorient the mission of Federal Institutes to focus on secondary and post-secondary education, establish partnerships with the SENAI/SENAC system for complementary training, and promote a University Reform—perhaps the most profound challenge,” he stated.
Guimarães was followed by Marco Antonio Zago, President of the Superior Council of the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp), who firmly stated that Brazil lacks proper ST&I governance. Zago advocated for strengthening state and regional ST&I systems to improve this situation and emphasized the importance of conferences like the one organized by FGV to discuss these issues.
“We hope that by the end of this cycle, culminating in the 5th National Conference on ST&I, we will once again have a strategic plan for the country, with priority action lines, defined goals, and allocated resources for implementation. This plan must consider the vast regional diversity of a continental country. Therefore, it is essential to strengthen state and regional research agendas for scientific and technological development, with participation from the academic community and local businesses, supported by both federal and state funding,” said the Fapesp president.
The panel concluded with remarks from Vahan Agopyan, Secretary of Science, Technology, and Innovation for the State of São Paulo, who reiterated the need to strengthen innovation ecosystems and support innovative companies, especially startups.
Evaluation of Investments in Science, Technology, and Innovation
The second panel of the event presented proposals for the Definition of Guidelines and a Permanent Evaluation System for ST&I Investments. Caetano Penna, Director of the Center for Management and Strategic Studies (CGEE), introduced five propositions for evaluating mission-oriented policies. The first proposition states that assessing the impact of mission-oriented policies is an elusive task, as it involves long-term outcomes. The second proposition suggests that achieving missions requires mobilizing capabilities and conducting capacity-building activities in a systemic way.
“Capability refers to the stock of resources a country possesses, while capacity-building is an organizational skill. These capabilities are facilitated by three mechanisms: collaboration, competition, and control,” explained Penna. According to the director, the remaining propositions assert that “missions require a consistent, coherent, comprehensive, and integrated mix of policies and instruments”; that “mission-oriented policies are anchored in mechanisms and structures dedicated to institutional learning”; and finally, that “it is possible to monitor and evaluate mission-oriented policies through specific ‘Theories of Change’.”
Penna further detailed how mission-oriented policies can be monitored and evaluated using these specific Theories of Change, based on a 2023 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “It is possible to monitor these policies not by looking at their impact or whether they are effective or efficient, but by examining the process and the inputs fed into the policy,” he emphasized.
In addition to CGEE, the National Council of State Research Funding Foundations (CONFAP) also participated in the panel. The Council’s president, Odir Dellagostin, before presenting recommendations for the new sector policy, highlighted the importance of investments in ST&I.
“A compilation of studies from the European Union showed that the total value generated by public research is three to eight times the value of the investment. Another study from the United Kingdom revealed that for every £1 invested by the government, a social return of 20% to 50% in perpetuity is generated,” Dellagostin explained. He also presented a 2017 study demonstrating the impact on economic growth for every 1% increase in public spending in selected areas, particularly in R&D.
Among the recommendations proposed by the CONFAP president are: establishing clear and measurable goals, and adopting multidimensional evaluation approaches capable of considering various aspects such as socioeconomic impact, technological innovation, and contributions to sustainable development.
Also on the panel, José Biruel, Science and Technology Relationship Manager at Petrobras’ Research, Development, and Innovation Center (CENPES), and Paulo Figueiredo, researcher at the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration (FGV EBAPE), contributed proposals for the ST&I agenda.
Biruel presented Petrobras’ experience with R&D investments, while Figueiredo focused on the role of technological accumulation from an industry perspective as a way to help shape investment evaluation guidelines in ST&I. The researcher also emphasized the limited participation of the private sector in national R&D investments compared to other countries: “We still have a very high presence of the public sector in this investment and very little from the private sector, which leads to a lack of capacity in the private sector to innovate,” Figueiredo noted.
Among his proposals, the researcher stressed the need to position industry at the center of innovation policies; to value the importance of accumulating technological capabilities for innovation at the firm level; to develop and strengthen ecosystems and their startups in strategic areas for Brazil, with a focus on exports; and to encourage technological diversification among companies to transform the industrial fabric.
Among the panel’s discussants, Tales Andreassi, Deputy Director of the São Paulo School of Business Administration (FGV EAESP), cited a paper by researcher Fernanda De Negri titled Public Policies for Science and Technology in Brazil: Recent Trends and Developments, which analyzes innovation policies.
“By addressing sectoral funds, innovation laws, mandatory R&D, and national spending on S&T over the past 20 years, the study concludes that in 2020, Brazil’s spending on Science and Technology was 0.5% of GDP. In other words, 30 years have passed and we are at the same level as in 1992. Between 2013 and 2020, spending fell by 37%. The big question here is how to shield the S&T sector from such large investment fluctuations,” Andreassi emphasized.
Another institution that participated in the discussion was the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), represented by researcher João De Negri, who pointed out that there is no mapping of research laboratories in the country and their capabilities across different fields of knowledge. “The suggestion is to develop a program that scales up ST&I investment by creating high-impact technology hubs,” contributed the IPEA researcher.
Impacts of ST&I Policies and Programs
In the final panel of the Conference, Edson Kondo, Director of the School of Public Policy and Government at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV EPPG); Francisco Saboya, President of Embrapii; João Carlos Ferraz, researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ); and José Fernando Perez, CEO of Recepta Biopharma, gathered to discuss the Definition of Metrics for Measuring and Evaluating the Impacts of ST&I Policies and Programs.
According to Director Kondo, the increasing speed of technological advances is a concern when it comes to evaluating indicators. Francisco Saboya added to Kondo’s remarks by emphasizing that if speed is not included as a variable in the innovation equation, Brazil will not progress toward becoming an “upload nation”—that is, one capable of generating and exporting innovation.
“My suggestions include creating indicators that take into account the time and speed at which innovations occur, the commercialization of the knowledge embedded in patents or research, and the incorporation of value into Brazil’s trade balance,” concluded the Embrapii president. All panels of this Open Conference included space for invited discussants to make recommendations and for audience participation.
To learn more about the 5th National Conference on ST&I, visit this portal.