Argentina: how to study and act upon local innovation systems

Abstract

This article examines a number of ideas about local innovation systems, how best they can be studied and what needs to be done to develop them further. It is based on experiences in Latin America generally and Argentina in particular. The first part briefly reviews the literature on local production and innovation systems. Following this, 10 hypotheses about the workings of innovation systems are presented, together with the same number of approaches to studying the characteristics and potential of any specific existing system. The third part sets out a number of measures that could be applied to improve local innovation systems in a given country or region. This paper argues that it is both possible and necessary to build bridges between analysis and action, theory and practice.