Entrepreneurship and Sustainability as Key Elements for Innovation: A Brazilian Dilemma

What is it about?

Considering the socio-economic reality of Brazil and from the relevance of the issues related to entrepreneurship and organizational innovation in the country, the importance of sustainability for the organizations could become a solution for the integration of entrepreneurship with innovation. The objective of this research is to highlight the relevance of sustainability for organizations as a way to trigger the integration of entrepreneurship toward innovation in the Brazilian context. Various exploratory and descriptive researches on the dynamics of entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability in the main organizations of the Serra Gaúcha (RS), Brazil were carried out through the Multidisciplinary Research Group on Innovation and Competitiveness, in partnership with a research Nucleus on Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability. The main results indicate that the key sectors of this Brazilian regional economy present less “innovation intensity,” which are mainly characterized by internal organizational activities of innovation, preventing them to become “regional systems of innovation,” and which presupposes the lack of sustainability. Those limitations can be characterized as “innovation ghettos.” In that logic, the researchers have also demonstrated the presence of “ghettos of sustainability, ghettos of innovation, and therefore, ghettos of sustainability and innovation” in the sectors of this Brazilian regional economy, but in differentiated and restricted perspectives.

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