ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the historical evolution of the innovation policy, with emphasis on the relations and on the dichotomies between state and market, delimiting the period of analysis of innovation policy in Brazil to the post-2006 period. It explores a synthesis of the main institutions, programmes and mechanisms of the explicit innovation policy in the ambit of the federal government. The chapter discusses the limits and the difficulties in the structure of the national system of innovation in Brazil, considering mainly the implicit policies in the country. The model of imports substitution industrialisation, in spite of its relative success and the expressive rates of growth in the gross domestic product has subsequently been the target of many criticisms. The federal government returned to the inclusion of innovation in the policy agenda in 1999, although it was restricted to the Ministry of Science and Technology.
