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Innovation and development: a revision of the Latin American thought

Article  in  Academia Revista Latinoamerica de Administracion · November 2017

DOI: 10.1108/ARLA-09-2016-0249

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ARLA
30,4
444
Received 19 September 2016
Revised 21 November 2016
4 July 2017
Accepted 18 July 2017
Academia Revista
Latinoamericana de
Administración
Vol. 30 No. 4, 2017
pp. 444-458
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1012-8255
DOI 10.1108/ARLA-09-2016-0249
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1012-8255.htm
Innovation and development:
a revision of the Latin
American thought
Innovación y desarrollo.
una revisión del pensamiento
latinoamericano
Javier Jasso
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Facultad de Contaduría y Administración,
Coyoacán, Mexico, and
Maria del Carmen Del Valle and Ismael Núñez
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas,
Mexico City, Mexico
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the contributions of what has been established as
Latin American thought, as science, technology, and innovation (STI) in Latin America have been strongly
related to development.
Design/methodology/approach – The analysis method is based on the review of a group of Latin
American and Latinoamericanista (Latin Americanist) authors who were selected on the basis of their
contributions to the explanation and proposals of public policy related to STI. The following are some of
the questions that guide the analysis. How much has STI in Latin American thought contributed to the
development theory? Given the fact that there are other dominant mainstreams, can we say that
Latin American thought is still relevant?
Findings – The main conclusion of this work is that Latin American thought is still applied to current Latin
American development discussions. This can be proven by the creation of particular concepts and analytical
frameworks such as structural heterogeneity, development styles, authentic and spurious competitiveness,
Sabato’s Triangle, the centre-periphery model, and STI policy practices.
Originality/value – This paper gathered contributions and categorised them into three dimensions:
state participation (intensity, composition), industrialisation as the impulse for development, and instruments
and public policy actions that can be implemented or have already been implemented.
Keywords Science, Technology, Innovation in Latin American thought,
Centre and periphery countries, Development, Dependence
Paper type Literature review
Resumen
Propósito – El propósito de este trabajo es el de reflexionar sobre algunas aportaciones provenientes de lo
que hemos denominado pensamiento latinoamericano en relación con la innovación, la ciencia, la tecnología y
su relación con el desarrollo.
Diseño/metodología/enfoque – El método de análisis se basa en la revisión de un conjunto de autores
latinoamericanos y latinoamericanistas que hemos seleccionado con base en sus aportaciones para la
explicación y sus propuestas de política pública en relación con la CTI. Algunas preguntas que guían nuestro
análisis son las siguientes: ¿en qué medida el pensamiento latinoamericano en CTI ha contribuido a la teoría
del desarrollo? y ¿dada la existencia de otros enfoques que predominan como pensamiento único, podemos
hablar de una vigencia del pensamiento latinoamericano?
Conclusiones – La principal conclusión de nuestro trabajo es que hay un pensamiento latinoamericano Innovation and
vigente que ha sido y aún es un referente actual para la discusión del desarrollo en la región latinoamericana,
como lo muestran la creación de conceptos y esquemas analíticos como los de heterogeneidad estructural, development
estilos de desarrollo, la competitividad auténtica y espuria, el Triángulo de Sábato, centro-periferia, así como
estrategias de política en CTI.
Originalidad/valor – Como parte del marco analítico hemos agrupado al conjunto de aportaciones en tres
direcciones: a) la participación del Estado (intensidad, composición); b) la industrialización como impulso al
desarrollo y c) los instrumentos y medidas de política pública a implementar o que han sido implementados.
Palabras clave Ciencia, tecnología, innovación en el pensamiento latinoamericano, países centro-periferia, 445
desarrollo, dependencia
Tipo de documento Revisión de literatura

Introduction
Science, technology, and innovation (STI) are subjects that are strongly related to Latin
American development topics and have been studied by several Latin American and
Latinoamericanista (Latin Americanist) authors[1]. The main objective of this paper is to
explore, analyse, and evaluate the relevance of Latin American thought[2]. These works
emphasise the need to establish and implement STI practices, especially within a context
highly dominated by public policies, with results that reflect STI’s inability to create
well-being and development among the population of developing countries, especially in
Latin America. These approaches affect the performance and direction of public policies,
organisations, and firms, who turn out to be the actors who create innovations. To illustrate
Latin American contributions to the discernment and explanation of development
phenomena in the region, the contributions of two economic, social, and historical
perspectives have been compiled in a way that emphasises the complex nature of STI and
development: macro-level and meso-micro-level.
The macro-level perspective has a broader and more generalised standpoint about
development and remains critical to conventional approaches for economic growth and the
use of science and technology. Some questions that arise at this point are as follows:
Why does Latin America have limited achievements in STI and why have these
achievements not promoted development? How should development for periphery countries
in a globalisation era, during regionalisation and global environmental hazards be defined?
What kind of society do we want?
The meso-micro-level perspective arises from frameworks where public policy
instruments are emphasised, proposed, and designed; these instruments come from
sectorial, regional, and firm studies to advance the idea of development. Under this
perspective, we wonder: How far can the endogenous innovation process progress if there is
a dependence path that tends to be repeated? How does the co-evolution of technological and
institutional systems in developing countries occur? Is it possible to aim for sustainable and
equal endogenous development?
The explanations for these and other kinds of questions come from all the great thinkers
this paper refers to. The paper is also a reference, which can guide the discussion about
Latin American development from a critical perspective. We have integrated ideas and
questions about the relationship between science, technology, innovation, and development
within a territorial, geopolitical, national, and international scope. We would like to point out
that the concept of innovation was not initially a part of Latin American thought; despite
technical progress, technological development, and change being strongly implied while
focussing the discussion on the productive and economic applications of science and
technology. In accordance with Schumpeterian thought the concept of innovation came from
the economic growth of Southeast Asian countries, such as South Korea and China, during
the 1960s and 1990s, and it was rescued and reincorporated into the discussion relating to
science and technology.
ARLA Latin American thought: the idea of development and the criticism of the
30,4 neoliberal model
Between the interwar period and since the 1929 crisis, new ideas, many of them developed by
Keynes, promoted a new world order regulation with influential State participation.
The international economic crisis that resulted from the First World War had huge effects on
the global economy of the 1920s – the Great Depression – and also on the Second World War,
446 as the standard of living fell in central and periphery countries. It was therefore necessary to
redefine the international economic system to a new system that included the idea of
promoting economic and social progress based on institutions like the United Nations and its
specialised agencies (Sunkel and Paz, 1970). The “centre” abandoned its hegemonic claim
about peripheral thought and a theoretical stage (Ferrer, 2013), and a geopolitical vacuum was
created in which Latin America pushed an original development vision and boosted its
international presence. New approaches based on local realities were promoted, with their
frameworks separated from those created from and for developed countries.
Prebisch (1949) is the originator of Latin American development thought. In the 1940s,
he established the Latin American School of Economic Thought, which is based on the
theoretical approach that we could refer to as estructuralismo cepalino (Economic
Commission for Latin America (ECLA) structuralism)[3].
Latin American economic thought was founded in the 1940s and it is based
on the theoretical approach referred to as historical structuralism. This school believed the
economic subordination mechanism was generated in the constant decline of the
value of raw materials that were exported by the least developed countries, in comparison
to the value added to manufactured goods imported from rich countries.
The rich countries were considered the export enclaves, having unequal trade terms
with industrialised countries.
From 1950 to 1970, the region achieved an impressive catch-up in economic growth, but
financial and technological issues also increased. For example, for several years, and during
the import substitution (IS) industrialisation model from 1965 to 1981, Brazil’s GDP was
7.2 per cent and Mexico’s was 6.7 per cent (CEPAL, 2012). While it is true that productivity
grew in Latin American countries, it grew much faster in the centre countries, while
exchange rates moved in the opposite direction. Taking advantage of the growing periphery
markets, the presence, growth, and participation of transnational companies strengthened,
and they ventured into most dynamic aggregating value sectors: technology and those in
which they had a competitive advantage over local firms. The technology was highly
focussed on just a part of the production and social structure, leading to a process whereby
much of the population remained outside the development. The explanatory models applied
to policies for development, STI are based on “have been” proposals, mostly based on
conditions in developed countries. These were highly influenced by 19th century liberal
beliefs until the 1930s (with a rebound after the fall of Keynesianism and the idea of
Europe’s welfare state from the late twentieth century), in what has been called
neoliberalism; this has turned into the current dominant, orthodox global mainstream.
Thus, in economics, the neoclassical approach considered that technical change is
incorporated into the production equipment, because it is inferred that functional
productiveness is a part of capital accumulation. This perspective establishes that
technology is an often insufficiently used productive factor that can be freely found on the
market, so technology can be considered an available and independent input in the process
of progress. Under this premise, it is unnecessary to explain the causes of the phenomenon
of technology, because it occurs in the same way at any time and under any situation;
therefore, we see technology with static lenses and not as a process ( Jasso, 2004).
The conventional and neoliberal economic solutions were insufficient and inadequate for a
problem that was much more complex.
 Latin American thought brought new explanations and interpretations of STI and Innovation and
development from evaluating and studying the reality of Latin America, and from criticising development
theoretical models and ancient neoliberal public policy recommendations differentiated from
the real facts. In its contemporary phase, the economy around Latin American development
was conceived differently and depended on a country’s path. Politically independent hundreds
of years before, these countries have had educational and scientific research systems and
possessed disciplinary and intellectual traditions which are quite different from those that are 447
dominant in Anglo thought (Puchet, 2004). Hence, new interpretations were developed to
explain the differences between centre and periphery countries; also, paths and journeys were
formulated from questioning those interpretations that had emerged in developed countries.
Varsavsky (1975) criticised the concept of underdevelopment because it implies the main goal
was to achieve a certain development by employing the style of developed countries. The gap
between the stages of growth theory in the 1950s was clear. The idea by which Latin America
had been guided, which started from a regional impulse from the United Nations and its
regional headquarters, the ECLA, was to achieve development that was understood as a
process that should include economic progress and social development.
Table I illustrates the framework from which we establish the theoretical,
methodological, and political contributions of Latin American thought, and the
aforementioned authors[4].
Some authors may be repeated in this taxonomy because of their contributions to both
perspectives. This figure is just an attempt to gather the contributions of a group of Latin
American thinkers who have criticised the orthodox neoliberal approach of science,
technology, innovation, and development. The analytical framework is widely discussed in
the following sections.

The idea of development from an STI

perspective STI and the development model

Neoclassical critical perspective on: Macro

The static and linear model of development
The progress perspective based on the general
equilibrium model
The viewpoint on the market as the most
efficient mechanism to achieve development
The assumption that technology is a free
market good
The consideration that companies are kind
of a “black box”
The idea of development
Unequal exchange
Dependency theory
Periphery and monopoly capitalism
Structural heterogeneity
Proposal of an endogenous industrial model
The State as a generator and promulgator of development
The recognition of the non-neutrality nature of technology
STI as a primary element of development
Authors:
Prebisch, Furtado, Dos Santos, Marini, Gunder Frank, Pinto,
Carmona, Fanjzylber, Sunkel, Paz, Cardoso, Herrera,
Varsavsky Hirshman, Alonso Aguilar, Sagasti, Salama,
Tavares, Sábato, Nadal, Pérez, Katz, Urquidi
Meso-micro
Active, selective, explicit, and implicit public policies
Cooperation and technology transfer frameworks
Technology transfer regulation (Foreign Direct
Investment, license, patent)
Creation of studies and diagnoses of a specific sector,
region, and actor
Production, consumption, and domestic marketing of
high value added products
Innovation value chain occasionally presented in Latin
America Table I.
Authors: Theoretical and
Sagasti, Wionczek, Pérez, Urquidi, Herrera, Pinto, Sábato, methodological policy
Katz, Ferrer, Varsavsky, Nadal, Unger, Tavares, Teitel, contributions of Latin
Corona, Dagnino American thought
ARLA Macro-socio historical-economic perspective
30,4 The cepalina school (ECLA School), which started in the 1940s, considered that the
economic subordination mechanism was generated by a constant decline in the value of raw
materials that were exported by the least developed countries, in comparison to the value
added to manufactured goods imported from rich countries. This means that trade terms
between industrial and commodities goods had a value relationship measured by unequal
448 international prices. This school argued that the export of raw materials was productively
articulated with the productive structures of central economies and not with their self-needs.
Over time, raw materials embedded in value and the required technology were acquired
from the central countries through delayed foreign purchases, or they became obsolete and
ceased to increase added value for exported raw materials.
With the ideas of Prebisch (1949), and aside from a large group of Latin American
thinkers[5], IS was proposed, which meant that imports of capital and consumer goods were
replaced by a national industrial production. The strategy involved a planned State
intervention to protect domestic markets, raise tariff barriers to trade, and direct savings.
The international trade theory of perfect competition has passed into history. Furtado (1993)
explained that Latin America’s problems were found in: how technical progress spread from
industrial centres to the world economy periphery, which created an international labour
system division that operated as a concentration mechanism for the benefits of technical
progress present in those same industrial centres; and that peripheral industrialisation could
not be realised with the same model of industrial centres. Furtado warned that, at that time,
technology corresponded to the needs of economies with high levels of productivity and
savings, and the consumption patterns that spread universally corresponded to higher
income levels. In the last stage of the IS model, extended lessons and the spread of
technology in Latin America was mainly determined by the demand for consumer goods,
and that this would eventually create productive structures that prevented the transition
from growth to development[6].
Latin American thought was aware that the region’s productive structure was very
different in its composition and evolution from that presented in industrialised countries,
and that the idea of a heterogeneous structure was the centre of discussion. Focussed on
technological phenomena perspective, the argument states that the conditions in which STI
processes are unfolding in periphery countries creates a heterogeneous production structure
and a weak scientific and technological infrastructure which is unable to generate capacities
for the appropriate use of scientific and technological knowledge. This may help to achieve
more equitable distribution of benefits and promote inclusive development; i.e., a more
equitable global integration. Sunkel and Paz (1970) believed that the above is a fundamental
problem because it generates different kinds of productivities that still maintain the
heterogeneity that has manifested as increased income inequality and unfairness (CEPAL,
1964). To solve this problem of productive heterogeneity, Cardoso and Faletto (1969)
proposed the intensification of the internationalisation of the domestic market, meaning that
salaries needed to be fixed, while domestic firms were encouraged to join international
circuits. This should result in increased productivity with more sophisticated production
methods, a pull effect, and an employment ascent. He said this was about breaking apart the
history of corporate and technological foreign domination (Nefrin, 1978).
For other authors, like Pinto and di Filipo (1979), the problem was not viewed as a
deviation in national accounts but as a dual historical evolution that prevents backward
productivity diffusion; as a result, many activities kept focussing on the economic
past. Pinto doubted that the development could ever reach the Latin American region as it
did in the central countries. For Pinto, the asymmetric relationships were not conjectural
but, rather, the normal way a global system worked. Inside dependence relationships, it was
impossible to expect any kind of evolution that could be called development.
 The dependency theory, proposed in the 1970s, is another important theoretical reference Innovation and
motivated by Latin American thought[7]. This theory posits that the relationship between development
developing countries (periphery ones) and core countries repeated the dependency
relationships among them by using international exchange and transfer mechanisms for
goods and technology (Cardoso and Faletto, 1969; Sunkel and Paz, 1970; Marini, 1974).
Similarly, Gunder Frank (1979) said that in the 1960s, a metropolis and its satellites
deepened and maintained relationships of dependence, considering its technological, 449
economic trade, and foreign investment dynamics[8]. Within these more radical positions,
Dos Santos (1989) maintained that a new world relationship frame had been set since the
1970s, in which traditional agricultural structures were destroyed, a great capital
penetration in agriculture was presented, and an industrialisation based on technology
importation (that opens new forms of the dependency phenomenon) was encouraged
(Dos Santos, 1989). A few years later, Dos Santos (2015) argued that there is a “delay”
(taking the form of underdevelopment) that is not an expression of pre-capitalism; rather, it
is a dependent and subordinated articulation of the economic, social political, and cultural
world system that produces different hegemonic centres in the permanent geopolitical
movement and is also developing in short and long cycle movements, linking it to different
productive forms of organisation and relationships.
These cyclical movements also help to explain the geopolitical hegemonies imposed at
each stage of the evolution of the global system and to discern the difficulties of their
undefined progress in the face of the growing dynamism of technological change under the
capitalist accumulation of the production model impetus.
Salama (1976) reconsidered the centre-periphery relationship statement, proposed by
Prebisch and others, to explain the dominant relationship between industrialised and
developing countries, which implies the existence of barriers to the incorporation of new
technology. Salama explains the process as follows: to produce certain “dynamic,” lasting,
and international goods, relatively advanced capital-intensive productive techniques are
adopted (which are more advanced than the prevailing countries’ techniques; however,
developed countries still lag behind), in which there is an increase in the optimum
dimensions of production. The depressed local demand for such goods not only punishes
that particular industry, but also the intermediate goods and equipment industry (with the
high margin of unused capacity), causing a decrease in industrial investment that quite
slowly leads to economic dynamism. Today, Salama warns that the finance capital’s
dominance, over the productive one, also explains the lower rates of investment in the
industrial sector. According to Salama (1976), productive activities move from core countries
to peripheral ones, and from the latter to even more underdeveloped countries; this is
because a lagged productive technology can generate as much capital return (or even more)
in a peripheral country than the last generation’s productive process in a central country.
In a globalised world where capital movements are explained not only by the product
market (goods trade) but also by the factor market, taking advantage of lower unit labour
costs, weak labour laws, fiscal policies, and environmental legislation tend to lead to an
increase in firm profits. Nevertheless, this relocation process is not stable and, when facing
technological change in developed countries that allows an increase in profits or regulations
in peripheral countries, there will be relocation to central countries or a new relocation
towards a country with relatively lower development. Thus, countries cannot generate a
solid industrial tissue and are vulnerable to capital productive movements and the
financialisation process. Without proper state participation, people in developing countries
are far more vulnerable and they are exposed to greater inequality and poverty.
Other thinkers, like Urquidi (1979), Noyola (1956), Carmona (1964), Aguilar (1983) and
Tavares (1981), concurred with the initial proposals and criticisms of capitalism. Many of
them, initially raised by Prebisch, created the idea of promoting national industrialisation,
ARLA reducing external technology dependence, and guiding this process alongside strong State
30,4 participation. For Urquidi (1979), much of the inefficiency of state actions was due to the fact
that the historical conditions were tainted by the financial disaster of the 1980s and the states’
overprotection that spawned a weak business sector. Urquidi insisted on the importance of the
State and defined a public policy priority to promote economic development and generate new
planning scenarios. His main concern seems to have been the endogenous generation of
450 innovations to diminish the region’s “technological subordination”. Urquidi favoured a
compromise solution, regarding foreign investment and its related technology transfer.
He agreed with the need for this flow of foreign capital but warned about its consequences,
especially in terms of the financial commitments and employment generation. Then,
he proposed to enhance imports with national development and pursue a progressive strategy
that would enable the growth of local capacities. These proposals included implementing
technologies suitable to domestic conditions, taking advantage of local materials, creating an
internal market that underpinned long-term generation of the endogenous technology process,
and promoting regional technology cooperation.
Carmona (1964), Aguilar (1983), Ferrer (1974), Katz (1976), and some other authors
proposed an eminently endogenous development strategy to prevent transnational
companies from monopolising the use of scientific and technological knowledge in the
productive process. They insisted on the need to make the scientific and technological
process local, as a more successful way to achieve Latin American economic development
and political independence. Carmona raised the issue regarding the need to produce for the
national majorities, banish the sub- and overexploitation of national natural resources,
consolidate the economy, and strengthen the trainees’ levels of education. One of the
strategies to reduce the limitations of transnational globalisation would be the application of
adequate technologies based on the local conditions. With this in mind, Tavares (1981)
pushed the IS model as one of the main objectives for promoting Latin American
industrialisation to encourage the creation and strengthening of internal mechanisms, such
as the creation of development banking; investment in education, research, and
development; expansion of the domestic market with upgrades in employment; a higher
level of investment; and the optimal amount of planning to strengthen the institutional
framework of the economic agents required to promote development. Tavares’s main
concerns were about breaking the backlog and transcending into the era of industrialisation
and to stop being the supplier of raw materials to the international market. External
strangulation due to the increasing difficulty of importing necessary goods for growth was
one of her main concerns (Guillén, 2007). She rethinks and adjusts the elite consumption, as
Furtado argued as well, into inclusive industrial, technological, and social policies.
Other thinkers also criticised the proposals initiated from the IS model. Hirschman
(1958, 1996) is, perhaps, a pioneer who emphasises the sectorial differences by suggesting
that innovation needs to arise during the “difficult phase” of the capital goods IS; however,
when facing backward linkages, a brake eventually emerges somewhere in the chain. In the
same paper, Hirschman emphasises that this “technological strangeness” is a characteristic
of the underdeveloped productive chains. The characteristics of the dynamics of a
productive region interfere with innovation and technological change. Unger (1988) also
emphasised the need to characterise the competitive and learning dynamics in developing
countries based on the reactions and attitudes of entrepreneurs to complement micro- and
macro-industrialisation objectives.
An important issue to discuss is the background of STI conception, especially because
they are not independent variables. Nadal (1977) deducted that scientific research or
knowledge usage are social facts and not inputs and cannot be considered independent from
the development effort; therefore, its subject, methodology, and purposes are submitted to
the particular way in which production is organised, the productive-level forces and ideas
have progressed, the level to which the productive forces have developed, and through Innovation and
the ideas from which society explains its universe and justifies the rationality of the development
socio-economic and political system.

Meso- and micro-STI socio historical-economic perspective

From a historical and dynamic perspective, other authors have proposed various
methodologies; they have created concepts and design diagnostics that supported new 451
public policy actions. Not only did many Latin American thinkers develop theoretical and
empirical proposals, but they were also a part of, and sometimes managed, several
institutions in their home countries. The origin of this perspective traces back to the late
1960s and especially since the 1970s, when the first successes and failures of “balances”
studies were elaborated (Sagasti, 1981).
Wionczek et al. (1974), Herrera (1978), Teitel (1973), and Fajnzylber (1989) created a
complete map of the world scenario with the position of Latin America in it; this map
provides particular explanations about the specific economic and technological issues that
every country faced.
These and other more detailed studies on STI proposed a more specific and selective
public policy measures that indicated the complexity and diversity of technological
phenomenon, taking into account the diversity and shades of sectorial, business, and
regional studies. These studies usually concurred with the proposal of actions to define an
endogenously based strategy aimed at generating the capabilities to adopt, adapt, and
manage technology in Latin America. For these authors, development is not achieved by
just applying technology itself, but it must be framed and guided by a plan that establishes
where and how to apply the technology. In Latin America, technology is neither applied to
an empty land nor to a homogenous productive structure, as tends to happen in the
industrialised countries. Therefore, the hardship of creating virtuous circles is much greater
for Latin American countries than for developed countries.
Initial studies were quite aware of the needs for creating mechanisms to improve
technological conditions in periphery countries, and the importance of doing so considering
their own conditions rather than the needs of core countries.
Theoretical constructs about endogenous, intermediate, and appropriate technologies
can be found in those efforts mentioned before (Sábato, 1971). Sabato also emphasised, from
an endogenous perspective (see footnote 8), that the existence and nature of the learning
process in developing countries is an important element through which the production
process can be adapted to the operating conditions following minor or incremental changes
and innovations. Other authors who followed this path were Sagasti (1981), Teitel (1973),
and Unger (1988). After the experience of the IS model, Katz (1976, 1998) highlighted the idea
of technological learning and development in each country.
Important studies emphasising the relevance of dynamic differences, cycles, or
trajectories and the identification of sectorial, firm, and region dynamics were made by some
other authors, such as Pérez (1986), who made it clear that given the stage of technological
transition that was experienced, any strategy that could be followed would require
technology as a central element, where new fields and new players would provide certain
“opportunity windows” to Latin American countries. Unger (1988, 1994), for example,
studied evolution based on each sector and industrial organisation and their territories, from
which the micro-level studies were underlined and several variables were incorporated
to analyse and deepen the understanding of the business strategy, productive performance,
and innovative behaviour. Corona (2004) emphasised the science and technology historical
analysis to explain the current lagged conditions. These conditions have existed since the
sixteenth century when Mexico was a colony; even then, there was a separation between
science and production, and it was thought that the latter would evolve under technology
ARLA dependence, scientific constraint, and economical and cultural subordination, highlighting
30,4 the impact of technology on society.
Latin American thought on STI incorporates the analysis of agriculture, but it takes
distance from the most industrialised ideas, for example, Arroyo Correa (1988), in Chile, and
Hernández Xolocotzi (1987), in Mexico. These authors made very important contributions to
social studies on science and technology for economic development in the agro-food sector.
452 Arroyo boosted new paradigms in traditional sectors, such as agriculture. In his proposals,
he anticipates the technological paradigm concept (Dosi, 1982; Cimoli and Dosi, 1994) and
the techno-economic paradigm (Pérez, 1986), he explains that this occurs when the emerging
development process in agriculture is based on biotechnology advancement and
institutional aspects such as agrarian reform and food autonomy. Hernández Xolocotzi
(1987) recognised the importance of traditional agricultural technology based on farmers’
lives and ancient knowledge to discovering new versions of science and technology.
His conceptual contributions about agro-ecosystems, his critique of the purely technical, and
his epistemic vision of multidisciplinary agronomy are quite important.
Within all these authors’ proposals on designing public policies that help guide STI,
a decisive State participation as regulator and market controller was explicit and implicit.
For example, Sagasti (1981, 2011) illustrated the problems of diagnosing science and
technology in the Latin American region that later led to science and technology policy
proposals. As Herrera (1978) warned, the role of agents and the interests inside his definition
is either an implicit or explicit policy[9]. From public policy, and from the beginning of his
work, Nadal (1977) emphasised his critical position on the reach of STI policies to impulse
economic development in periphery countries, making some social criticism. He highlighted
the need for planning regulations and the use of science and technology policy instruments.
In Ferrer’s (2013) words, “The wage repression has been a key element to hold aggregate
demand and back away from what financial capital considers the inflation threat”. As a
public servant, and based on his relationship with Sábato (1971), Ferrer (1974, 2013)
proposed an “open-integrated industrial” model based on “learning by doing”, unlike Katz
(1976), that incorporates the learning into the implementation of public politics. Ferrer
suggested that the model needs to be integrated and opened, and must be directed to
increase productivity, especially in dynamic sectors for technological innovation; moreover,
it should be developed by local privately held and state-owned companies in a
technologically autonomous direction. Ferrer promoted technology funding when he took
over the presidency of Banco Provincia, replacing Sabato, and turned it into an instrument
that extended the scientific and technical interrelationships proposed by Sabato’s (1971)
Triangle, whose ideas preceded the Triple Helix models (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 1995).
Facing this scenario, planned state participation is crucial, because the state is the one actor
that must eliminate dual economic structures; it must clear the access to technology
packages using state and private groups’ purchases as incentive mechanisms to promote
science and technology.

Summary and conclusions

As we have seen in this paper, Latin American thinkers’ contributions would point out that
there is a Latin American theoretical-methodological knowledge that has contributed to the
explanation and understanding of development from a wider perspective, in which we must
take STI into consideration. These proposals need to be reconsidered and re-evaluated,
despite the fact that the problems presented half a century ago have not changed that much.
Even though the ideas presented in this paper are but a brief reminder, it becomes quite
clear that the thought regarding development and STI is more of a process, like a complex
and dynamic phenomenon that involves multi- and trans-disciplinary approaches. It has
been four decades since the implementation of the “Washington consensus” adjustment
policies as part of the so-called neoliberal economic paradigm in Latin America and its great Innovation and
promises: strong growth, decreased poverty, and the radical reduction of inequality. development
These promises do not seem like an economic model failure but a scam. In fact, they resulted
in completely the opposite: weak growth, increased poverty, and a high wealth
concentration in Latin America. It is recorded that in 2014, Latin America was considered
an unequal region in the world.
In the need for alternatives, Latin American societies have tested several different paths 453
to deal with the problems that have been caused by the perpetual application of the
neoliberal model: Ecuador’s and Bolivia’s good-living assays, Brazil’s mix of austerity
measures and strong sponsor industrialisation, Peru’s quest to achieve globalisation
through exports to China, and Chile and Argentina’s efforts to boost commodity exports.
However, among Latin American countries, Mexico has perhaps applied the neoliberal guide
the longest. It remains a major manufactured goods exporter (some of these goods have
great technological complexity), but exports are manufactured by foreign firms with very
few linkages to national production.
Despite the variety, major structural difficulties remain in all Latin American countries
that have already been identified and analysed by the Latin American thought. These
differences are found in terms of the development and also in the role of science and
technology: in the structural heterogeneity that creates difficulties for economic
specialisation; in an import of technology that fails at reducing such structural
heterogeneity, which eventually shows an inability to convert some achieved growth into
real development, and when it happens it seems more like an unusual technological
behaviour; in asymmetric trade relationships with developed countries, who exploit their
scientific and technological advantages.
This paper does not fully review STI theoretical approaches and the Latin American
development perspective. Therefore, we propose different research topics to guide the
discussion about the relevance and convenience of Latin American thought on STI. As such,
we incorporated these ideas and gathered them into three analytical frameworks: the first
reflects the state’s participation and role, the second establishes the relevance of the
production industrial model, and the third addresses the idea of dependence and development.

State participation, instruments, and incentives

In the neoliberal model, the market is the one item that dictates prices. As such, it indicates
the direction of the economy, making the planning and regulatory function of the State
unnecessary. However, its historical role has been relevant even in those countries
considered to be the most liberal. This idea validates Latin American thought, which has
emphasised the importance of the state, rather than the market, in the orientation and
direction of countries, especially given the prevailing inequality and lack of diversity
present in contemporary capitalism.
Some of the Latinoamericanistas’ contributions mentioned in this paper are placed
depending on the topic: inequality, heterogeneity, and hegemony, i.e., to whom (the social
objective) is directed, identifying it as the pillar of development. Much of the defined thought has
focussed on the how, but has not recognised the who and for whom. For this idea, we wonder:
(1) How should STI orientation be taking the incentive’s dilemma and the private and
social nature of knowledge into consideration?
(2) How do we assess national technology and innovation facing production relocation
processes that come with global chains?
(3) Who should rule these global processes, strongly driven by agents, firms, and
organisations, that are part of the common good?
ARLA Endogenous production model and development styles
30,4 From our perspective, the need for the endogenización (using internal resources and creating
them for local use) of STI is still relevant for the generation of spillovers that grants more
equitable benefits and stimulates productive and technological linkages aimed at national
productive activity, and not only the ones targeting large, domestic or foreign, corporate
groups. This consideration leads us to the territorial scope, to local (national and
454 endogenous) and global dilemmas, and to the growing economic activity that originated in
the 1940s. Ferrer (2013) warned us that basic phenomena occur in the transnational sphere
without clear global governance.
In order to meet national production needs, our countries will need the capability to
produce more complex science and technology – the more the better – without abandoning
export goals. This is especially true if we consider that the export model itself tends to
entrench and concentrate on certain goods and corporate groups that do not promote wealth
creation or distribution. Further, Latin American thought gave us one of the keys to make
the introduction and development of technology into the productive structure a more
virtuous path that meets the population’s needs; converting populations’, countries’,
regions’, and territories’ needs into scientific and technological problems.
Here are some questions: Is structural heterogeneity an inherent characteristic of
periphery countries or is it a generalised condition that points out diversity, which may as
well be an advantage? Faced with the difficulty and complexity that micro-local specificity
means and with more concentrated and fragmented global dynamics, what is the National
State’s role and the guiding idea of national projects?

Dependence and integration

From our perspective, development necessarily leads to the “endogenous” idea of
development at a local level but is also framed in a coexistence environment with other
countries and territories. Therefore, technology transfer is something more complex than
the importing of capital goods, as it requires technical capacities to operate a specific plant.
Thus, scientific and technological development should be used neither as a framework of
permanent acquisition nor as a mechanism to reduce the technology gap. Besides, the idea of
acquiring external technology without assimilating it and adapting, as Varsavsky (1975)
warned, can cause an implicit danger of acquiring a lifestyle that may not be completely
desirable for a country or a region.
The problem of dependence will continue as long as dominance exists. Dependence can
turn into cooperation if each country defines its own development. This is not about
promoting autarchy but, rather, motivating the respect, sovereignty, and collaboration
between very different and very diverse countries. Economic and monetary integration
processes should respond to what Déniz (2010) suggested about taking the development
perspective into account while leading to a redistribution of income among and
within countries.

The idea of development

Development involves a very complex phenomenon that also implies that situations and
aspirations of each country, region, and sector need to be evaluated. For countries in
Latin America, this has been an ongoing and constant attempt to achieve development that
seems unattainable and sometimes elusive, mainly because it is not only a process of capital
accumulation – as conceived in the neoclassical growth theory – but also involves the
creation of a productive structure capable of generating endogenous growth itself; as
previously noted, growth that is also capable of institutional reorganisation and an increase
of the entire population’s welfare (Sunkel and Paz, 1970; Ferrer, 2013). It is not about
implementing the recommendations that have worked under other conditions and other
times; instead, it is about Latin American countries learning from their historical and Innovation and
theoretical past to ease the task of creating better STI strategies and achieving development. development
The development that has been associated with equality would aim to guide public policy
and collective action to build a more equitable world.
We consider that development is a process from which humans manifest their
contributions throughout life and to future generations with the main goal of achieving
human and planetary welfare and a state of survival by creating and using resources, and 455
collective and individual capabilities. The “development” idea not only includes a limited
view of human civilisation, but it lacks the inclusion of other living and immaterial entities
such as land, water, and air, which are part of the world we live in.
Some of the research topics we propose as questions are as follows:
RQ1. How can we categorise centre-periphery relations within a global context, where
digital technologies enable a wider access and diffusion of knowledge way beyond
governments, states, and multinational corporations?
RQ2. Can contemporary technological leaps from countries like Korea, China, Japan, and
the USA be repeated again for Latin America?
RQ3. To what extent does development impose civilising conditions that may go far
beyond local economic growth schemes?
RQ4. How can we place development within a universal context where STI points to
sustainability and the survival of nature?
We believe that there is still a huge challenge for those trying to explain these kinds of
problems; decision makers, authorities, and government officials and agents who define
directions, such as producers, firms, universities, research centres, and agencies; and social,
non-governmental, and non-business organisations. It is this Latin American generation’s
duty to define the most appropriate strategies for improving the livelihoods of our people by
taking care of the environment. To achieve this, it will be necessary to imagine and design a
development model where STI are deployed to serve this objective. For this, we have Latin
American thought as our ally.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for all suggestions and comments made to a
previous version of this paper. The authors would also like to thank Laura Martínez
(Student of a PhD programme in economics at UNAM) for her translation and edition
support and Professor José Déniz for his moral and intellectual guidance. The authors
appreciate the support of “Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos para la Innovación y
Mejoramiento de la Enseñanza” PE302215 from UNAM through Dirección General de
Asuntos del Personal Académico, and macroproyecto Innovación, competitividad y
estrategias de empresas y de política pública, from UNAM FCA and the Asociacion
Latinoamericana de Facultades y Escuelas de Contaduría y Administración (ALAFEC).

Notes
1. Albert O. Hirschman, Alonso Aguilar, Amílcar Herrera, André Gunder Frank, Anibal Pinto, Carlota
Pérez, Celso Furtado, Fernando Fajnzylber, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Francisco Sagasti,
Jorge A. Sábato, Jorge Katz, Miguel Wionczek, Oscar Varsavsky, Osvaldo Sunkel,
Raúl Prebisch, Simón Teitel and Theotonio Dos Santos, Alejandro Nadal, Kurt Unger, Leonel
Corona, Aldo Ferrer, Víctor Urquidi, Gonzalo Arroyo, Efraín Hernández Xolocotzi, Juan F. Noyola,
Fernando Carmona, María da Conceição Tavares, and Pierre Salama are among them (see Table I
and del Valle, 2010). Some other works conducted in this direction are the ones carried out by Galante
et al. (2013) and Dagnino et al. (1996).
ARLA 2. Latin American thought, as an analysis category, is valid as far as we consider that there are
30,4 similarities between development approaches, given historical conditions, such as being colonised
by Spain and Portugal and due to the measures implemented by ECLAC in the 1940s. Obviously,
there are some differences among and within the countries that would question the
“Latinoamericanista” perspective as relevant to the analysis.
3. This is clearly expressed in the study by Prebisch (1949).
456 4. Latin American thought continues to explore, analyse, and create alternative scenarios,
considering authors such as Judith Sutz, Rodrigo Arocena, Hebe Vessuri, Rosalba Casas, Gabriela
Dutrénit, Mario Cimoli, Paulo Tigre, Daniel Chudnovsky, Paulo Figueiredo, Helena Lastres, José
Cassiolato, and Simon Schwartzman, just to mention a few.
5. In Brazil, C. Furtado, Theotonio Dos Santos, Ruy Mauro Marini; Argentina, Almícar Herrera y
Aldo Ferrer; in México Víctor Urquidi and Juan F. Noyola; and some other thinkers like Albert.
O Hirschman, Pierre Salama, Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, Stephany Griffith, André Gunder Frank,
Amartya Sen, and Sanjaya Lall.
6. Celso Furtado claimed emphatically that a persistent increase of productivity does not lead to a
reduction of social heterogeneity, or at least it does not do so within market mechanisms (Furtado,
1992, p. 47, quoted by Lins and Marini, 2014). Free translation.
7. The first paper was elaborated in 1967 by Theotonio Dos Santos, Vania Bambirra, and Orlando
Caputo, in the Centre for Socioeconomic Studies at Universidad de Chile.
8. For wider discussions on technological dependence go to: Vaitsos (1975), Sábato (1971), Urquidi
(1979), Wionczek et al. (1974), and Ferrer (1974).
9. A similar interpretation was established by Galante et al. (2013).

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Corresponding author
Javier Jasso can be contacted at: cursoenlinea72@gmail.com

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