The Changing Role of Science, Technology and Innovation Policy in Building Systems of Innovation: The Case of Mexico

Abstract

Latin American countries still account for most of the world’s social challenges: extreme poverty, malnutrition, high infant mortality, low life expectancy and a decline in schooling quality indicators. For many countries, Mexico included, a number of these problems can be traced to income inequality, a low-qualified workforce, increasing presence of informal sectors and the dominance of economic structures heavily dependent on low-intensive technological sectors. Limited investment in science, technology and innovation (STI) also remains a salient feature of these economies. In this regard, a growing stream of literature has drawn attention for linking STI to broader economic and developmental agendas (Kraemer-Mbula and Wamae in Innovation and the Development Agenda, OECD, Paris, p. 152, 2010; Gault, Innovation Strategies for a Global Economy, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, p. 232, 2010; STEPS, Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto, The STEPS Centre, Brighton, p. 24, 2010). In many instances, the bid is for the review and renewal of the relationship between STI activities and the overall social and economic dynamics of countries (Azzazy, Science, 333(6040):278–284, 2011; Cozzens and Sutz, Innovation in Informal Settings: A Research Agenda, p. 53, 2012). From the National Innovation System (NIS) perspective (Freeman 1987; Lundvall 1992, 2003; Nelson 1993; Edquist 1997, 2006), STI policy has been crucial as a means for development and consolidation of NIS’s agents both in academia and the productive sector, as well as in incentivizing a dynamic interaction between them. Likewise, important for STI policy is to promote and sustain the creation, dissemination and use of knowledge as an interactive, self-reinforcing mechanism guiding the generation of STI capacities, the operation of and governance of the STI system and its correspondence with the dynamics of social and economic systems. Public policy in general and STI policy in particular shape and reshape the institutional framework in which the system’s agents perform, and at the same time, the institutional framework sets some boundaries to the unfolding of public intervention. This chapter analyses how public policies have contributed, or not, to the building and nurturing the Mexican System of Innovation, and how the emergent system feedbacks the design, tailoring and implementation of STI policies in Mexico. We also consider the institutional environment in which the NIS performs, the mechanisms governing public funding, as well as the configuration of the policy mix, as a fundamental part of the public action that seeks to influence the social and economic dynamics of the country. The analysis is focused on how the policies, the system and the institutional environment have co-evolved since the 1940s.