Ensinagem e aprendizagem em incubadora tecnológica: um estudo de caso na Incubadora Tecnológica de Caxias do Sul

Abstract

This research is structured on three relevant phenomena in the contemporary economy, entrepreneurship, innovation and university-industry relationships, converging elements in the environment of technology-based business incubators. Considering that the justify to the creation of this type of incubator is the endorsement to its own context, the problem which guided the research questions was the effectiveness of the Technology Incubator of Caxias do Sul (ITEC) in the promotion of these three factors of economical development. ITEC was selected due to its relationship with the University of Caxias do Sul (UCS), one of its supporting entities, and also due to the fact that it is a unique initiative in the northeastern region of Rio Grande do Sul, one of the economically most important regions of the state. The methodology applied in the research was the case study, based on the bibliographic and documental investigation, making use of semi-structured interviews as main sources of information. Besides the incubator s management staff, representatives of all companies currently incubated, and representatives of approximately 80% of the graduated companies in activity were interviewed. The study sought to delineate the context related to entrepreneurship, innovation and university-industry relationships, which insert ITEC and, at the same time, it sought to describe the performance of ITEC in the promotion of these elements. For this, it was made use of the teaching-learning perspective respectively, while the development conditions offered by the incubator to the companies and the management practices adopted by them. The results suggest that, particularly in the recent past, the incubator has become an important mechanism for the endorsement of the mentioned context, and at the same time, it indicates the existence of a great potential to be explored, mainly in terms of innovation and university-industry relationships.