Innovation and Industrial development policy: Social challenges and debts in Queretaro, Mexico

Abstract

The industrial growth product of technological advances symbolizes a transcendental axis in the strategies of modernization and development of the State; however, this development based on techno-economic innovation has not been able to respond to socio-environmental demands, which shows the pressing need to move towards an innovation policy that reorients its priorities. The main objective of the work is to analyse the innovation policy of the state of Queretaro to identify its priorities and social orientation. To this end, the concept of innovation and its importance for the socio- productive development in the entity is defined; the need arises to know the type of innovation promoted by the State policy, its scope and limitations to meet their social and environmental needs. The methodological approach is qualitative, semi-structured interviews were applied to key actors of the innovation system in Queretaro. The proven assumption is that this policy prioritizes the benefit to large companies and shows little interest in the socio-environmental problems of the region. The results show that there is a social projection in the innovation agenda for the non- operationalized entity, therefore, it is necessary to improve the strategies of the innovation policy to move from the techno-economic business priority to the socio-productive- environmental priority through the collaboration between the State, academia and the productive sector.