Analysis of the role of business incubator in internationalization of basic technology companies

Abstract

The technological and economic changes that occurred since the second half of the twentieth century expanded markets, reduced the limits imposed by national borders and promoted a real and indisputable globalization of trade, especially for emerging countries. In this context, Brazil is shown as a major player, along with other countries that make up the BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, a group with growing political power given the relevance of their markets. Nevertheless, Brazil's share in global trade is small compared to other emerging countries. The level of internationalization is particularly low in relation to products with higher added value, with components of technological innovation. Most of the products exported by Brazil in 2011 (65.8%) consists of products of low and medium-low technology, 27.9% is medium-high technology and only 6.2% is high-tech (MDIC, 2012). Thus, this article proposes to analyze the characteristics of the internationalization of small and medium-sized technology-based companies, incubated and graduated in order to identify the role of incubators in the process. We started from three basic premises: that the technology-based companies are essentially innovative companies; business incubators constitute environments for potentiating networks, both between the incubated and graduated ones with external agents And finally, the third premise is that innovation is a competitive advantage that leverages the process of internationalization of companies and has proven crucial to the competitive performance of the company in foreign markets. The research from cases of small technology-based companies shows it is relevant given the need for Brazil to stimulate the insertion of foreign companies selling  technology-intensive products, review passage The research is descriptive in character, in the form of a multicase study of six companies, three incubated and three graduated. The results show that innovation is actually set as the main advantage to compete in international markets. Intentional and planned, there is an acceleration of the internationalization process in young companies, designed with a global vision. It was found that the incubator favors the formation of social networks that encourage innovation and interaction with other actors that can foster the process of internationalization, however, no actions perceived by the entrepreneurs themselves for this purpose, which points to an opportunity to systematic action of the incubators in supporting the internationalization of companies.