The geography of innovation, agents and networks: a comparative study between innovative environments in Brazil and Portugal

Abstract

In recent decades, a series of transformations, a corollary of the ongoing globalization process, productive and territorial restructuring, the advance of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the predominance of financial capital in the economy, has produced several changes in the production process, either with the introduction of new products, new processes, new organizational forms and strategies, or producing new territorial dynamics. In this context, such transformations are changing the geography of innovation, the territory then becomes the expression and condition for the realization of innovation, with the emergence of new spatial arrangements focused on innovation, among them: the technological parks, the technological incubators, understood in this research as being "hybrid spaces of innovation". This research has as purpose the comparative study of the formation of innovation environments in Brazil and Europe, particularly in Portugal, highlighting the general conditions of production, the innovation network as well as the social and economic agents involved in these environments. (AU)