Introduction

Carlota Perez has reflected broadly about the diffusion of technological revolutions, the way in which technologies and technological capabilities determine the growth potential of countries, and the way in which the global technological context shifts windows of opportunity for the development of countries and regions. In this direction, the document titled ‘A vision for Latin America: a resource-based strategy for technological dynamism and social inclusion’, elaborated for CEPAL, reflects about Latin America's opportunities during the deployment stage of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) paradigm, and the installation stage of a new paradigm, which seems to be oriented towards biotechnology, nanotechnology, new materials and new energy sources. It presents a proposal that suggests a dual development strategy for Latin American countries – ‘dual integrated model’ – based on science, technology and innovation (STI) for building robust resource based-processing industries and specializing on high-added-value products. Such a model integrates a top-down strategy of development, which aims at achieving competitiveness on world markets for specialized natural resources, with a bottom-up strategy, which seeks to identify and promote wealth-creation activities amongst localities.

As it has been broadly discussed in her work (Perez 1985, 2002 and 2008), each paradigm implies not only technological change but also new ways of thinking or a new common sense towards efficiency and innovation, new ways of acting and new institutions. In this sense, in order to establish a strategy that benefits from the deployment of a paradigm or takes advantage of the installation stage, it requires the emergence of new social norms and new forms of agents' behaviour.