Condicionantes da inovação em empresas do arranjo produtivo de confecções de Santa Cruz do Capibaribe-PE

Abstract

The use of innovation in its broadest sense has become an imperative to define the survival of firms in the market competition. It is expected that companies located in Local Productive Arrangements - APL present advantages resulting from geographical proximity to facilitate the transmission of knowledge and innovation, including innovative elements by technological or organizational means contributing to the increased competitiveness of these clothing manufacturers enterprises in APL, as well as the region's economy. It is observed that the city of Santa Cruz do Capibaribe-PE shall be consolidated with the production of clothing in Agreste, since the APL the municipality corresponds to the largest number of projects related to the production and marketing of clothing, especially between the three most prominent to local economic dynamism. On the production arrangements, sought to address the theoretical assumptions of RedeSist to understanding the specialized environment productively in a territorial delimitation. For the approach to innovation, was based on the contributions of Schumpeterian thought and neochumpeterianos authors to understand the introduction of new or improvement of products, processes and performance in the market both in the social environment and in business. The aim of this work is to analyze the determinants of innovation in micro and small business making Santa Cruz do Capibaribe-PE. And investigate possible links between the supporting actors (public and private) of APL aimed at stimulating innovation in the municipalities making activity that compose it. It was fundamental theoretical support of the connection between the Oslo Innovation Manual OECD and the similarities of the Bogotá Manual approach; with the adapted model of the Innovation Radar Bachmann and Destefani (2008) used by SEBRAE and the Local Productive Arrangement approach RedeSist/UFRJ. These connections subsidized instruments for field research (questionnaire and interview guide). Methodologically, a direct search by the author with a sample of fifty-nine clothing manufacturers enterprises (formal and informal) where questionnaires were applied was performed. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eighteen actors support. The content of these two research instruments (questionnaires and interviews script) rely on the conceptual and methodological basis of manuals Oslo and Bogota, the RedeSist and Sebrae. The results point to the following: i) on average, companies have low innovation index, with a score of 2.38, which the metric of innovation radar ranges from 1 to 5, resulting in the setting of enterprises whose innovative evidence they are sporadic and incipient; ii) the highest scores were observed in the platform size, brand, relationship and networking, where the last three are directly related to the market and the customer relationship; iii) on the other hand, appear as challenging dimensions, from the point of view of innovation management, the dimensions called solutions, processes, organization, supply chain and innovative ambience and iv) between the difficulties of APL stood out those more common in micro and small environment, such as difficulties in accessing specialized services, such as technology, design, logistics and credit; v) with respect to support policy actions were observed in the city studied and in other cities of APL, but so little planned and structured lacking greater efficiency of the actions taken since they occur in a little coordinated manner and diffuse between themselves and companies.