COOPERATION BETWEEN INDUSTRY AND ACADEMY CAN PROVIDE GAINS IN PRODUCTIVITY, IMPROVING THE STRATEGICAL COMPETITIVENESS 2005-01-4068

Brazil is undergoing a positive phase. It is time to question ourselves about how have we come to this point and how is this going to evolve. Our country went, in little more than a decade, since the early Nineties, from a closed economy, with almost 50 years of experiments based on the import substitution model, for a wide open relation with the rest of the world, followed by internal adjustments (privatization of state owned companies, regulating agencies, some structural reforms) that led to the current configuration.

Today a relatively mature relation with the rest of the World prevails, subject to the typical instabilities of the globalization, in which the Country, however, has been apt to participate of the international relations both as an exporter as an importer of goods and services, besides serving as a productive platform for many worldwide products.

Soon after the Country experienced the aperture, a phase of true suffering for the national industry and its resources was initiated, mainly the human factors, who were affected by an enormous technological gap, either current or in formation, in relation to the more opened economies.

Many national capital companies were affected, the unemployment in all levels climbed and we observe a denationalization of many industrial segments, with companies being sold foreign investors, if not simply shut down. Many analysts, at the time, forecasted: we will be transformed into a typical Paraguayan economy, dependent of importation and, at most, a primary products exporter. Some of those analysts went even further and stated that our future was to turn the backyard for multinational interests, with our manpower being exploited at vile wages and our executives replaced by foreigners.

That was not, however, what we can see now. The price of the adjustment was huge, but the balance was not the worst. This paper achieves to analyze how the Brazilian automotive industry could be prepared to face the dynamism of this new Brazilian economic reality. The diagnosis is that more competitiveness will have each time, in special between the emergent countries (as China, India, Korea and Iran). The work has the hypothesis of that, if to act with antecedence, we could be in equality with our competitors and considers the implementation of an institutional project to join efforts of the industry and university, to attract and forming talents that they will contribute for the improvement of the strategical competitiveness of the industry (in the long stated period).