Formação de redes sociais de empresas incubadas : o caso da incubadora de empresas de base tecnológica de Ribeirão Preto

Abstract

Technological based firms (TBFs) have been widely studied because of its importance in the nation´s innovation system. Health industry is one of the most innovative sector at the economy and it´s constituted also of great corporations and health care manufacture equipment and biotechnology small firms that compete at health equipment manufactory and biotechnology market niches. Ribeirão Preto is characterized as one of the technological region at São Paulo state. The development of SUPERA is one of the strategies adopted to consolidate the city as a health technological polar region. This work analysis the social relations between technological-based firms and institutional agents of health sector. For this purpose it´s used social networks methods to calculate specific measures such as density and centrality degree of actors. It evidences that SUPERA is at the center of studied information and cooperation networks. Theorists defend that these kind of network support companies´ innovation process and its competitiveness. The analysis of density and centrality measures so as actor´s scores of 2-mode matrices where calculated using the software Ucinet. The results confirm the central role of SUPERA for the creation of new TBFs; identify that the studied firms are inserted in low density networks and that strong relations seems to exist more frequently in cooperation relations between university-firms rather than with another institutions. It concludes that there are few entrepreneur´s information exchange relations and that they do not recognize the relevance of institutional agents in the firms innovation process. Cooperative action is almost inexistent or occurs in the informal level without relevance to the TBFs´ innovative system. The incubation process seems to be the extension of academic projects that tends to the mantain the distances between firms and market reality.