Innovation in the Brazilian Electricity Sector: current scenarios and trends

Abstract

There are three main trends in the electricity sector in upcoming years: digitalization, decentralization and decarbonization, changes that are an opportunity for utilities to become more profitable through innovation development. In this scenario, the establishment of cooperation networks between large companies of the electricity sector and start-ups may be a solution to foster innovation, and the purpose of this article is to analyse whether this solution may also be suitable for the Brazilian context. In order to discuss and characterize the innovation process in the Brazilian electricity sector companies, a review of the service innovation literature and regarding the role ofstart-ups to innovation generation in the electricity sector was carried out. Furthermore, data from the latest edition of the Brazilian National Technological Innovation Survey (PINTEC) was selected in order to analyse the main characteristics of innovation in the Brazilian Electricity Sector. The results from this article confirms findings from specialized literature that states that service companies have a larger outward degree of innovation development in comparison to inward innovation, which, in turn, confirms the importance of network relationships for companies to gain access to a broad and versatile set of resources for innovation.