Liderança tecnológica intermediária e sistema intra-organizacionla de inovação: construindo novas competências tecnológicas em uma subsidiária brasileira da indústria automobilística

Abstract

The tendency of global organizations in decentralizing research and technological development activities is associated to a technological competence development in subsidiaries of emergent countries like Brazil. The present study approaches product technological competence development in global automotive organizations in Brazilian subsidiaries by presenting the concept of Intermediate Technological Leadership (ITL) as the enterprise purpose to be reached by local subsidiaries. The concept of Intra-Organizational Innovation System (IIS) is presented as a model to be constructed and applied in such local subsidiaries in order to provide the achievement of all necessary technological competences.It is argued that the necessary knowledge for IIS construction is fragmented in literature among studies on new product development, knowledge management and organizational learning, organizational competences and technological innovation. The integration of these sources reveals six basic elements necessary to IIS: Strategical adequacy, Interpretation of external environment, Organizational internal structure conception, External structure integration, Organizational basic processes systematization and Consideration of the human factors and relationships. The application context is introduced by an automotive industrial sector analysis. The practical research is carried through immersion into a local powertrain development and production subsidiary environment through observation and non-directive interviews. The results from theoretical confrontation and practical research finally converge to a IIS model, circumscribed to its structural aspect and to specific context of the analyzed organization. However, such model aims to be a reference for other works on technological competence development in local subsidiaries or even national organizations of diverse areas.