Facilitadores e barreiras à inovação: um estudo de caso em uma empresa do setor sucroenergético

Abstract

Innovation is a systematic and multifaceted process, which involves several elements, internal and external to the organization. These elements are capable of promoting or hindering the development of innovations, considered as facilitators or barriers inherent to the process. Due to the relevance of the exposed theme, the present research has the general objective to analyze the main facilitating factors and the barriers to the innovation process in a large organization of the sugar-energy sector, located in the state of São Paulo. The methodological course was structured for an applied research, with descriptive and explanatory objectives, with a mixed approach (quantitative and qualitative) and a reasoned on a bibliographical and documental research and, later, by a survey and a case study. This research contributed to fill two gaps identified in the literature: (i) the in-depth understanding of the elements that significantly impact the development of innovations; and (ii) the identification of these elements in an organization of the sugar-energy sector, since no studies were found that explored this relationship, which becomes necessary to achieve the objective proposed in this study.The results found indicate that the company practices, predominantly, the innovation of processes, in an incremental way, with the expansion of its productive capacity as the main objective to the act of innovating. Regarding the internal facilitating factors, the following stand out: (i) human element: autonomy and freedom to express new ideas; (ii) organizational environment: organizational culture; (iii) resources: human resources; and (iv) managerial aspects: innovation as a strategic guideline; while for external facilitators, the following stand out: (i) clients: support and collaboration in the development of new ideas; (ii) competitors: data and information sharing; (iii) suppliers: support and collaboration in the development of new ideas; (iv) government: Law of Innovation and Law of Good; (v) technologies: cloud computing; and (vi) innovation networks: knowledge sharing. With regard to internal barriers, the following stand out: (i) human resources: limited time; (ii) institutional or organizational: inadequate communication flow; (iii) financial: return on long term investment; (iv) informational or knowledge: little maturity in R&D; and (v) technologies: difficulty in accessing, obtaining and using technological resources; while for external barriers, the following stand out: (i) market: market uncertainties; (ii) financial: bureaucracy for obtaining credit; (iii) government: bureaucracy for the commercialization of innovations; and (iv) informational or knowledge: lack of qualified people in the market.