Inovação e trajetórias tecnológicas: a produção de medicamentos no Brasil

Abstract

Considering innovation as the main way of competition, this master's thesis investigates the possibility of identifying technological paths in the pharmaceutical industry in Brazil, including the Official Pharmaceutical Laboratories of Brazil (LFOB), focusing on the role of patents as a mechanism of appropriability. Based on the evolutionary theory of technological change, which defines a paradigm as specific patterns of problem-solving, and a technological path as the ways of solving them, the study aims to verify the technological path traced by the pharmaceutical industry in Brazil based on patents filed under Brazilian jurisdiction between 2000 and 2024, a period marked by significant institutional changes. The guiding hypothesis of the work is that there is no consistent and well-defined technological trajectory in the pharmaceutical industry established in Brazil. To achieve the proposed objective, the configuration of the pharmaceutical industry in Brazil is initially presented, marked by the coexistence of transnational companies, national companies, and Official Pharmaceutical Laboratories, as well as by high external technological dependence. Subsequently, the social network analysis (SNA) method is applied to patent citations extracted from the Lens.org database, as this allows establishing relationships between individuals in order to identify technological connections and possible trajectories. The results indicate weaknesses in the articulation between patents, both in the overall industry and in the specific case of LFOBs, suggesting that the technological path found is neither consistent nor well-defined, confirming the hypothesis of the work. What seems to exist, in fact, are some "islands" of knowledge centered around a few of the most relevant patents in the sample. Therefore, the need for intervention in a sector with a twofold interest, social and economic, is evident. In this sense, policies to stimulate the pharmaceutical industry should be designed considering an efficient integration between industrial and social policy.