Desenvolvimento regional, política pública e inovação: o setor de software na Bahia

Abstract

This work examines the relations between the international technological and productive restructuring process and the trajectory of Bahia’s economical development, giving emphasis to the institutional and political factors, with the objective of discussing the possibility, the necessity and the program conditions for the inclusion, in the regional development strategy, of the economical sectors, which utilize knowledge intensively, among which it takes software as the object of analysis. Historically the development of Bahia is characterized by a paradox between an expressive economical performance – the 6th GDP in the country – and a precarious social situation – the 22nd Human Development Index-M among the 27 Brazilian states. At the root of this paradox there is a strategy for development centered practically in an exclusive way of attracting exogenous investment blocks, that are specific and concentrated, which are maintained essentially isolated from the economic and technological dynamic of the region, and are subordinated to dynamics and chains of decision which are external to the local institutions. The economy of Bahia was taken, by this strategy, essentially as an instrument for a specific amalgam of local and national interests which made feasible and reproduced a radical process of concentration of the economical structure and power in the political space of Bahia. In this instrumental perspective – still ambiguous in the first half of the 50´s, already established in the second half of the same decade, and made radical starting from the political conditions favored by the military coup d’etat in 1964 and institutionalized public policies of the state throughout the 80’s and 90’s – neither the development of the competitive capacity of the industrial sectors with local roots nor the intra-regional distribution of the investments become relevant elements. On the other hand, the methods for electoral reproduction of power – fundamentally based on the authoritarian and clientele-wise use of the State and on the efficiency of mass communication -, limited he necessity and the possibility of the development of efficacious social policies, which could make up for, even though partially, the exclusion aspect of the economical strategy. This political and economical trajectory, besides enhancing the precarious scenario of the social indicators which characterize Bahia, implied in the generation of significantly relative delay in the adaptation of its institutional and economical structure to the new social-technical global paradigm, and in the consequent atrophy of the development of intensive productive sectors of knowledge, that are the basis of the global economy which emerges for the next decades. Pressures originated from the international productive restructuring, the repositioning of the national policy for development, and the modernization of the policies for development of the other Brazilian states (which bring about the growing risk of losing relative space for Bahia in the division of the national production), have created a context of necessity of the reformulation of the strategy for the development of Bahia. From the perspective of the reformulation of this strategy, which certainly involves other multiple and complex social, economical and political issues, this work examines the possibility of promoting development of a sector of software involved with innovation and competitivity. For this exam, it builds and applies, in an experimental way, a model for the analysis of the innovation environment of the software sector, based on the international experience and on the context of the developing countries. The target of the model is the companies, the knowledge institutions, the public policies and their respective relationships. The main conclusions drawn are that Bahia presently counts on a small and limited software sector, that is not very qualified and with small participation in the national market, with rare exceptions, and a knowledge infra-structure with some significance, but isolated from the productive sector and outdated in relation to the present infra-structure in smaller Brazilian states. On the other hand, this work identifies the existence of an economical space in the GDP of Bahia for the growth of the software sector, and an infra-structure for teaching, research and for entrepreneurship with potential for the feasibility of this development. Above all, the work makes it evident that in the last 3 (three) years, there has been the establishment of a new public policy of the state for promoting the technological development, which has been focusing specifically on the software sector. A strategy aiming at the strengthening of the regional industry for software operates in spaces in the market that are very limited, which demand at least a national perspective and the precise identification of the opportunities and competitive advantages. Factors associated to the absence of a project that may meet the specific needs of the software sector, the structural limitations of the public bureaucracy, the necessity of expanding the public investments, the dynamic of the sector and systemic policies of the government that frequently are non-convergent, and the fragility of its articulation with society, nevertheless, may compromise the effective impact of a strategy of this sort in the regional productive basis.