Abstract:
This paper deals with the application of a dynamic model, combining Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and Penrose’s theory
of the growth of firms, under the New Institutional Economics (NIE) terms, to analyze and manage the “Agribusiness Innovation System”
(SIE) coordinated by an agricultural research-development (R&D) organization in Brazil – Embrapa. Considering the changes in S&T
paradigms together with broader transformation of domestic and global economic environmental conditions, Embrapa in the nineties
sought its own sustainability and internal reorganization as a “firm system”, and also that of the Brazilian agribusiness system, as a public
“innovation system”. To offer R&D, Embrapa’s decentralized research centers interact with each other and partners to meet agribusiness
R&D demands of the clients, tending to be organized as a complex R&D network. The intended goal is to propose an applied model to
subsidize quantitative analysis for the decision-making process in terms of SIE management as a whole and to test key variable
relationships when applied to aquaculture, fruit-growing and horticulture business innovation subsystems.
