Innovation in natural resources: New opportunities and new challenges. The case of the Argentinian seed industry
Anabel Marin & Lilia Stubrin
#2015-015
In this paper, using the case of seeds, we explore the existence of both
new opportunities and new challenges for innovation in Natural Resource
Based Industries (NRBIs) in developing countries. Conventional views
construe NRBIs as low tech, with low technological dynamism, little
innovation, and little capacity to create linkages towards other
sectors. However, these views are being increasingly questioned. Some
authors argue that although NRs have always provided opportunities for
innovation and growth; substantial changes in international
institutions, markets and technologies during the last two decades or so
have created new and a more diverse set of opportunities for a larger
number of developing countries to take advantage of their NRs. We
contribute to this literature by providing new empirical evidence that
helps to better understand these new opportunities. In addition, we
suggest that as new opportunities are being created, new challenges also
emerge, and countries which do not comprehend fully both of these might
lose the opportunity opened by this historical moment of change to
become world leader innovators in NRs and related industries.
Empirically we study the case of seeds innovation in Argentina - a world
agricultural leader with a strong and advanced domestic seed industry.
Based on firms' interviews and secondary data we show how the new
opportunities created for innovation in seeds have been taken by some
companies in the developing world and how some new challenges are
questioning the capacity to pursue further some of the new
opportunities.
Keywords: Innovation, Natural Resources, Economic Development, Argentina
JEL Classification: 013, 033, 038