Regional innovation systems based on low technology industries in developing countries: salmon industry in Chile

Abstract

In 1980, the salmon industry became one of the main Chilean export activities”. Indeed, this activity has experienced significant and explosive growth positioning Chile in the last ten years as the second largest exporter of this product with 30% of the international market after Norway (50%). The salmon industry is mainly located in the Los Lagos region and has become a key strategic economic sector to promote the regional development. In order to understand about the potential emergence of industrial cluster or, eventually, a Regional Innovations System (RIS) based on this competitive low technology industry, it is important to understand to what extent innovation activities are the result of individual processes and to what measure new knowledge creation is being the result of dynamic and interactive processes where there is a systematic use of structural regional conditions. For example, the presence and emergence of linked and coordinated actors, proximity, specific knowledge and norms that arise from the path of an economic regional specialization as well as the result of the exploitation and absorption of regional externalities through knowledge spillovers. The present Chilean case study is based on a qualitative and quantitative methodology in order to analyse the existence and the stage of development of specific variables that are required to comprehend the evolution of a RIS. Most of the information has been collected through the application of interviews to regional stakeholders and a survey was applied to representative salmon industry firms, obtaining a preliminary and panoramic vision of the most important variables configuring a RIS. From the analysis carried out by this research, the results show that the consolidation of the low-tech Salmon Cluster in the Los Lagos region has not developed the principal factors permitting the consolidation of a RIS. On the contrary, regarding a RIS approach to analyze the national and regional innovation policies, the functional organization and the history of the salmon industry in Los Lagos and the view of the main regional actors, public and private institutions, there are important gaps in terms of the regional conditions to generate innovation. In this case, the business development and innovative behavior of a competitive rural industry such as salmon industry does not provide the conditions to promote a RIS.