Policies to promote nanotechnology: the case of Technology-Based Companies

Abstract

The development of organizational and institutional capabilities that enable access to border technologies is one of the crucial problems that developing countries are facing. To approach this problem, the case of nanotechnology in argentina is studied in the period of 2003-2018, focusing on a public policy initiative: the program “support plan for technology-Based companies” (PAEBT-Empretecno), aimed at promoting the creation of new technology-based companies, pertinent to one of the four funds of the national agency for scientific and technological promotion (ANPCyT), the argentine sectorial Funds (FONARSEC). Within this program, two specific cases were selected with the purpose of visualizing the organizational and institutional limitations and restrictions which were neither contemplated in the design of the policies nor in their subsequent execution while facing a developing economy in its struggle to participate in a new cycle of technological change.