Do licenciamento à exploração comercial : a gênese da inovação sob a ótica do trabalho

Abstract

The execution of a licensing agreement between the university and a company is not a simple “technology transfer” process. It is only the beginning of multiple “transformation” processes in different aspects that, together, make up the dynamics of the innovation process. The development that follows a licensing until the launch and commercialization of a product on the market requires a chain of different expertise. Such actors include, for example, academic researchers, workers in the administrative/legal staff at universities, agents of regulatory bodies, workers from different functions of the licensing firm and customers/users of the product. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the historical construction of these transformations – which are, how they occur and in which actor contributes – since the empirical understanding of the complexity behind the real development of new products can contribute to increase the probability if success in licensing of technology by universities. To support these claims, a case of licensing by UFMG was investigated for a veterinary medicine industry in 2004, which culminated in the development of a vaccine to combat Canine Visceral Leishmaniasis. This work analyzed a period of twelve years of development, that includes since the discovery of the invention by university researchers (2002) to the vaccine obtaining a monopoly in the market (2014). In short, the objective of the research was to understand, through historical ethnography, how the genesis of an innovation occurred from the perspective of the labor of the different actors involved in this case. The analysis of this historical construction allowed the division of the period that follows the licensing into multiple transformations, which permeate technical/scientific, market, regulatory, legal and organization spheres.