Pablo Lavarello

Biotecnología en la Industria Vitivinícola en Argentina: ¿Nuevas Modalidades de Innovación en una Actividad Tradicional?

This work analyses the responses of the Argentine’s Wine Industry face to the opportunities bring about by biotechnology. Since liberalization policies, Foreign Direct Investment and newcomers have reinforced competition, encouraging product differentiation strategies and innovation efforts in products and processes. At the industrial level, innovation in fermentation processes has been traditionally driven by technology incorporated into equipment and, more recently, by the adoption of new commercial yeast and enzymes developments. This paper discusses the effects of these strategy changes over wine firms knowledge base and the role played by food ingredients firms and local Science and Technology infrastructure in biotechnology adoption.

Biopharmaceuticals and firm organisation in Argentina: opportunities and challenges

In Argentina, some biotechnology firms operating in the human health sector managed to enter into the biosimilars segment of global biopharmaceutical markets at an early stage. These firms’ forms of organisation and their articulation with local science and technology infrastructure have played a key role in the development of business strategies in an institutional context that does not facilitate the resolution of the particular risks and uncertainties – be they technological, regulatory, or commercial – associated with these products. This paper examines the strategies of selected firms, using case studies. It postulates that firm organisation in economic groups, and the articulation in public/private networks enables local firms to successfully surmount the obstacles faced by innovative biotechnology firms in peripheral countries, which leads in turn to the achievement of technological and financial advantages.

Building capabilities to catch up with the biotechnological paradigm. Evidence from Argentina, Brazil and Chile agro-food systems

Latin American countries have been historically characterised by production structures highly reliant on natural resources. The recent diffusion of modern biotechnologies has reinforced this specialisation pattern. The cases of Argentina, Brazil and Chile show that, with different rates, scopes and directions, important advances have been made in the adoption of biotechnological products and processes associated with the specificities of their natural resource endowment, their industrial structure, their science and technology infrastructure, and the institutional and public policy context. This article discusses the opportunities these new technologies offer for changing the absolute (or comparative) advantages in the agro-food systems of those countries.