Paulo Roberto Feldmann

O atraso tecnológico da América Latina como decorrência de aspectos geográficos e de fatores microeconômicos interligados

The technological backwardness of Latin America as a consequence of geographical and microeconomics related factors - The present paper deals with the relation between geographical conditions in a specific region and the occurrence of innovations. The objective is to analyze the reasons for the backwardness of Latin America in matters related to technology development. The article?s approach is to observe the largest companies of the region, trying to understand why they almost never are part of the high technology industries. In order to get these explanations, the article mentions many authors that have dedicated themselves to this subject, paying more attention to those who had made comparisons with other regions in the world, specially Asia. The aim here was to characterize the geographic circumstances that were decisive to the occurrence of innovations. The results are deeply alarming not only because of the low number of Latin American companies that have reached worldwide recognition, but also because, almost always, these few companies came from where the technology content is very low.

Inovação de varejo sustentável: e-commerce e comércio justo

Com os mercados progressivamente mais competitivos, prezar por um relacionamento de longo prazo com os consumidores e cada vez mais importante, tornando necessario olhar para eles com atencao ao embarcar em qualquer uma das tendencias vigentes no varejo. O consumo, por sua vez, e uma atividade fruto de um processo sociocultural, no qual sao embutidos valores, principios e preferencias que condicionam as escolhas. O objetivo de pesquisa do presente estudo reside em investigar a inovacao no contexto das atividades varejistas, analisando sob a otica da inovacao sustentavel. Em especial, o presente artigo busca estudar o comercio justo no âmbito das logicas predominantes no varejo competitivo. A pergunta de pesquisa e: uma parceria entre empresa varejista e um negocio social de comercio justo configura como inovacao sustentavel? Para abordar a questao, a qual detem um carater exploratorio, um estudo de caso e proposto sobre o E-Solidario, uma parceria entre a Solidarium e o Walmart, que juntos tem como objetivo ser o maior canal de comercio justo no Brasil. Verificou-se uma inovacao de varejo sustentavel como resultado dessa parceria entre as duas organizacoes, com beneficios para ambas.

The Latin American Economy and Its Main Countries from the Point of View of Economic Representativeness: The Industrialization Process of the Region

With an enormous variety of political cultures and socioeconomic structures, Latin America stretches from Rio Grande to Antarctica, occupying more than 18 million square meters, with a population of more than one-half billion people. The 33 countries of the region, despite having problems and very diverse aspects one from the other, have very similar challenges. Thus, there are 100 million poor people of the region, and they are present in every country as well as enormous social inequality; corruption is endemic in the region. The economic history of the countries of Latin America is totally shared—from the substitution of imports during the 1960s and 1970s passing through galloping inflation in the 1980s and low inflation in the 1990s to the solution given to the foreign debt; all the questions were more or less common to almost all the countries, and generally they occurred at the same time.

How Latin American Companies Could Become Innovators

The large majority of the models known destined to stimulate the appearance of innovations within organizations are turned to companies which already perform in state-of-the-art sectors or high-technology sectors. This means that these models are not good to help the large Latin American companies because, as we have already seen, these same are rarely in these sectors. In other words, it is quite opportune for us to discuss how to feed innovations in companies that produce commodities or goods with low or medium technological content. This is because the importance of innovation is indisputable and, in the sectors that produce commodities, maybe this would be the only way to permit a company to stand out relative to its competitors. It can seem like nonsense, but in the sectors that do not use high technology, the search for innovation is just as or may be even more important than in those other sectors.

Culture, Geography, Wealth in Natural Resources, and Technology: Ingredients That Could Make Latin America More Developed and Innovative

Since Max Weber (1930), we have heard that culture weighs, determines, inclines, and ends by deciding which nations will prosper and which are condemned to live in poverty, as long as their people do not change their habit, beliefs, and values. Weber said that the protestant ethic was responsible for the fact that Germany and Switzerland were more successful economically in the twentieth century than the Catholic countries of Spain and Portugal.

The Importance of Large Companies for the Rise of Innovation in the Continent

More than 30 years ago, Galbraith (1978) pointed to the fact that the large companies were always increasing their supremacy and power over the economy because only they have the conditions to sustain the expenses demanded by innovation.“The small company does not have the conditions to sustain the expenses demanded by innovation” said Galbraith in “The New Industrial State.” In his ironic and didactic way of analyzing the large problems of the economy, Galbraith would say that the enemy of the market system was not the ideology but the engineer, as he was increasingly working in favor of the large companies and generating innovations in processes and products that contributed increasingly more to increase the difference between the large and the small companies. In all of his books, Galbraith emphasized the advantages of a large organization: “The large organization can tolerate the uncertainty of the market, which a smaller company cannot do…All, with the exception of the pathologically romantic, now recognize that this is not the era of the small ones.”

Management in Latin America: Where Are the Problems?

Evidently, the entrepreneurial structure in Latin America is very heterogeneous. In a general manner, in all of the countries, most of the more dynamic sectors are commanded by foreign companies whose organizational format and style of management correspond to the standard of each matrix. This is not the type of company we are referring to in this book, neither the state-owned companies, especially because these are constituted as a race in accelerated extinction on the continent. Our biggest concern is the private companies with local capital, as these today lack important corrections in their management models. Obviously, there exist honorable exceptions, and it is very difficult and reckless to generalize. Nonetheless, some problems and deficiencies are repeated in such a way that is concerning, as we will see below.

Biotechnology: Latin America’s Big Chance

Biotechnology is the branch of science that studies the transference of genes of one organism to another to give the latter the characteristics of the former. Truthfully, it is only the most recent chapter in the long history of the production of food for man. Organized agriculture had its primordial days more than 10,000 years ago when the first human groupings began to fix themselves in determinate areas and to cultivate farms of subsistence. At this moment, man has begun his learning of selection, reproduction, and reaping of seeds, seeking always to improve production.

The Sectors That Concentrate the Largest Companies in Latin America and Their Respective Business Environments

Because of the dissemination of globalization that has occurred on the Latin American continent at the beginning of the 1990s, the local companies were very exposed to the winds of change of international business. To survive, they were forced to diminish costs, discover niches impregnable by competitors outside of the region, or be transformed into global competitors. In this line, they began to be much more aggressive, seeking new managerial techniques, and accelerated the organizational restructuring. Some large local groups took good advantage of the moment of privatizations and bought state-owned companies and in this moment are restructuring them and, generally, with much success.

Technological Panorama of Latin America

At the beginning of the twenty-sixth century, some of the people that inhabited Latin America principally the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas had some scientific and technological knowledge many times superior to that which, at the same time, existed in Europe or in China. In some fields such as astronomy, botany, pharmacology, and metallurgy, the Spanish assimilated the knowledge acquired in the region and disseminated it throughout Europe.