Purpose This paper aims to identify the winning combination of innovation capabilities for selected Brazilian agribusiness firms along different value chain links. Design/methodology/approach Adopting a quantitative approach, the authors analyzed the relationship between innovation capabilities and innovative performance of 300 agribusiness firms through a multi-regression technique. Findings The results showed that transaction, management and development capabilities can improve agribusiness firms’ performance in underdeveloped value chains. Research limitations/implications For future research, the authors recommend analyzing further links such as traders and retailers to find the innovation capability for the entire agribusiness value chain. Practical implications Upstream firms should adopt new management techniques and tools, efficiently using their resources, while downstream firms should absorb and transform new technologies into products and processes. Social implications The authors suggest formulating public policies that propose the recombination of innovation capabilities to organize agribusiness firms and avoid commodity-oriented market dependence. Originality/value The literature on agribusiness explains innovation at the chain level, based primarily on scientific advancements rather than on innovation at the firm level. In this sense, this study provides empirical evidence that can help boost innovation in agribusiness firms.

The article's objective is to present a quantitative overview of innovation studies developed by Latin American authors. We adopted the bibliometric method to build the study, with data originated from the Scopus and Web of Science databases, covering 30 years (1987-2016). From this data analysis, we found out that innovation studies in Latin America, for long period, did not present a significant volume. However, this scenario has undergone changes, such as: (1) the growth in the volume of publications of the countries; (2) the relevant collaboration between Latin American countries and the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom; (3) and relevant presence of Brazilian authors and universities as the most productive in the region. Despite these changes, Latin America still falls behind the reference countries in the area, accounting for 2.75% of the worldwide bibliographic production on innovation in the databases analyzed.

PurposeThe paper presents a framework – the Dynamic Chain of Innovation – to analyze the dynamics of innovation in agribusiness.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopt a theoretical review in developing the theoretical framework.FindingsThe boundedness of economic agents will not simply be complemented by acquiring any missing asset or resource on the market. In a more complex way, complementarity occurs through collaborative relationships, aimed at developing specific solutions, joint development, special orders, interaction with research institutions, among others.Research limitations/implicationsGiven the theoretical nature of the study, it requires further development with empirical data that support the propositions made as future studies.Originality/valueThe dynamic chain of innovation framework starts from the very existence of incomplete economic agents. However, the authors sustain that the incompleteness is the result of bounded innovation capabilities in individual agents. Innovation, rather than emerging from simple market relations, ought to happen from relations established among bounded capabilities of incomplete agents along the chain or within the micro-links as a puzzle. The dynamics of innovation is thus based both on the boundedness and the complementarity of firms.

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This paper aims to analyze how capabilities are developed and arranged to generate economic positive results in two complex product systems (CoPS) firms. In this context, this paper is a case study based on interviews with the Shipbuilding and Offshore Industry in Brazil covering the overall characteristics of the firm's capabilities. Results show that, out of the four innovation capabilities, there is a difference in the predominance and importance of them in each firm. The essence of this difference seems to be in the technological content of each firm which will require diverse capabilities' configuration. The results from these two CoPS firms, corroborate with the finding of previous studies that the success of any firm relies on the predominance of at least one of the four capabilities. As this study is conducted in Brazilian Shipbuilding and Offshore firms, this implies that the generalizability of this study's findings is limited to firms in Brazil and cannot be applied to other markets without a further validation. This empirical research has extended our understanding about the relation between innovation capabilities and CoPs. Also, the obtained findings offer the Brazilian executives and managers strategic insights in relation to need to develop innovation capacities even in complex productive structures. The academic value of this research is the analysis of CoPS through the perspective of innovation capabilities. Besides that, the analysis of a re---emergent industrial sector in a developing country context.