Law and Innovation Policies: An Analysis of the Mismatch between Innovation Public Policies and Their Results in Brazil

This study aims to analyze, from a legal perspective, the public policies of science, technology and innovation offered by the Brazilian government, more specifically, the Brazilian Innovation Act (Lei de Inovação), in order to verify the reasons behind the mismatch between innovation efforts and its results in the economy. We seek to answer, preliminarily, the following questions: (a) What is innovation? (b) Should the state act in the innovation process? (c) What is the relationship between law and innovation policies? (d) Why is there a mismatch between what innovation efforts propose and what we can see in reality? Given these considerations, it becomes possible to answer the central issue of this study: Why is there a mismatch between what the Innovation Act proposes and what we can see as results? The issue was analyzed based on the premise that innovation nowadays is essential to society’s development and economy. We concluded that Brazil presents advances in this sector and most of the public policies managed to have efficacy for entrepreneurs, but institutional changes in the process of receiving these incentives and in its supervision are also necessary, such as a better articulation and coordination between entities responsible for its implementation and a better evaluation of public policies, improving them, so that companies may have the same competitivity of foreign companies. Although Brazil’s innovation rates are declining, the use of instruments of state support for innovation is being increasingly adopted, showing that even in adverse situations, they can be seen as advances.