Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions

TFS-18568; No of Pages 14 Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

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Technological Forecasting & Social Change

Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions Mauricio Cespedes Quiroga a, Dominique Philippe Martin b,⁎ a b

Coordinador del Sistema Boliviano de Ciencia y Tecnología, Vice Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Bolivia CREM UMR CNRS 6211, Rennes 1 University, France

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 29 November 2015 Received in revised form 8 June 2016 Accepted 13 June 2016 Available online xxxx Keywords: Bolivia Traditional activities Technology foresight Innovation trap Formal institutions

a b s t r a c t Combating poverty is a priority for developing countries. The program “Technology Foresight Initiative in Latina America” initiated by UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) is in line with this context. This paper examines two Technological Foresight for traditional Bolivian activities: the “textiles from camelid fibers” sector and the “medicinal plants” sector. The study model takes into account two dimensions: the sociotechnical regime and the formal institutions. Findings highlights the difficulty to implement a virtuous circle of innovation because of innovation traps (1) that can be seen as a consequence of the socio-technical regime, and because of some misfit between formal institutions (2) and what is required by the value chain. These results emphasize the learning curve of the TF for countries such as Bolivia. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

As part of the special issue it seemed interesting to highlight a country whose realities are often little-known, the Bolivia. In the context of South America Bolivia is still a country which development level indexes are lower than those neighbors (cf. main characteristics of Bolivia in Annex 1). Indeed since a certain number of years this country is engaged in substantial reform in order to improve the life conditions of its inhabitants and some sectorial studies have been made as part of the program “Technology Foresight Initiative in Latina America” initiated by UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization). Our article is based on two of them. One concerns the “medicinal plants” and the second the “textiles from camelid fibers”. Despite their apparent disparities these two projects concern two traditional productions which have common points. They are mainly from the Altiplano Region characterized by difficult natural conditions – high altitude, irregular rainfalls - and poorly suited to agriculture and breeding. This region is also subject of an eradication plan of the extreme poverty implemented by the public authority of Bolivia. Remember that this extreme poverty in rural areas reached the figure of 62.9% in 2005 it moved down to reach 38.8% in 2013 (source: UNIDO in Bolivia). The both projects initiated by UNIDO – “The future of Andean Medicinal Plants”, “The future of the textile industry” – are part of this strategy which first target is “to establish a vision of the future and the route to the production and marketing of product” (site web UNIDO – The future of Andean Products). ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M. Cespedes Quiroga), [email protected] (D.P. Martin).

Since the seminal works of Sen (1983, 1985) there is in management an emergent whole field of research on the issue of reduction of poverty (Ansari et al., 2012) and on the more transversal topic on inclusive growth (Roxas and Ungson, 2011). The actions initiated by UNIDO in Bolivia are consistent with this issue and are a perfect illustrative example of the need but also of the complexity of the change management. The percentages of extreme poverty are significantly higher in Bolivia than those of Latina America. In light of the specificities of this country we will take as first focal point of analysis the concept of “Innovation trap” initiated by Levitt et al. (Levitt and March, 1988) but by giving it a different meaning. Indeed we won't pay particular attention to the “myopia of learning” (Levinthal and March, 1993). We will highlight the existence of limiting factors which, interrelate between them, make virtually impossible any process of innovation. Such configurations constitute what we call “Innovation traps”. These factors are very different in nature and concern for instance the low density of the social network, the lack or the low level of training of the actors, the lack of infrastructure (roads, telecommunications …), the endemic problems of malnutrition and poor health of the herds, user's linkages, etc. A certain numbers of these limiting factors couldn't be resolved without the institutional environment's influence. Current approach considers that the institutions frame the interactions between people. They consist of informal dimensions (norms of behavior, conventions …) and formal dimensions (law, regulatory control, government agencies …) that pattern and regulate the human action in their social, political and economic aspects (North, 1990). This raises the question of the actions that are steered within this institutional context, as well as their

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023 0040-1625/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

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temporalities and their spatial coherence. Because to be efficient these institutional actions have to be in phase with the actors' activities on the ground (Folke et al., 2007). Our research will underline that for Bolivia, in view of its characteristics, it's difficult to match these dimensions. When this two actions plans aren't in phase we will speak of unfit between a socio-technical regime and its institutions (Folke et al., 2007). We try to highlight in this article that the complementary actions of the Bolivian state and of the actors involved in the socio-technical regime are required, but their time and space synchronization are complex because in the Bolivia context, a lot needs to be built. In the next section, we present the political context and stakes of the two TF Projects. In Section 2 we detail difficulties and challenges from a conceptual point of view and we propose a study model. Section 3 summarizes our main finding on the innovation traps and the institutional misfits for the both projects studied. We discuss the implications of these findings in Section 4, before concluding on some avenues for further researches. 1. TFs “medicinal plants” and “textiles – camelids”: political context and stakes 1.1. Elements on the Bolivian political context Bolivia has shown a solid macroeconomic performance in recent years. Through solid economic policies and strong reserves cushion that reduced macroeconomic vulnerability, the country has registered in 2014 a growth of its GDP of 5.4%1 ranking as the first growing country in the region. Simultaneously – after the election of president Morales in 2006, 2010 and 2014 – the government initiated a period of deep transformations of social policies as well as started a leading role of the state in economic affairs. Regarding this, it is important to emphasize the reduction of extreme poverty (from about 38% in 2005 to 18% in 20132) and school desertion (from about 8.5% in 2006 to 4.4% in 20143) on average (city and rural areas) in the whole country. Bolivia has held since 2006 an important political and socioeconomic reform that included a profound change in the Constitution, strengthening the role of the state in the economy and the implementation of various social programs. The new constitution (2009) is demanding various changes in the country's legal framework in various areas such as economy, education, production, management of natural resources and international relations among the most significant. 1.2. Knowledge and innovation: main stakes for traditional sectors The favorable context of sustained economic growth it is an opportunity to promote scientific and technological development and the creation of human talent, both necessary to boost the country's development and generate changes in its productive matrix to improve the quality of employment and human welfare in the country. The National Development Plan establishes within its main policies the recovery, protection and use of local knowledge and ancestral know-how. Under this mandate Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policies are focused on the sustainable use of natural resources. In this sense, Bolivian Government in agreement other regional governments, has prioritized areas like medicinal plants and textiles from camelid fibers since its importance related to national policies mentioned above. Working on TF studies on this sectors were considered pertinent since they have not only a high potential in international markets but they include a wide range of local actors including local communities which historically have not been included in the development agenda and emergent local private companies with competitive advantages in 1 2 3

Ministry of Economy and Public Finances – Bolivia. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean – United Nations. Ministry of Education – Bolivia.

both sectors (e.g. textile companies, designers and pharmaceutical industry). Participate and foster technology foresight exercises initiated by United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in these two traditional sectors (cf. Annex 2 and 3) provide an invaluable opportunity to establish local and regional networks between actors with different market perspectives. For example a llama breeder who lives in a rural community without access to infrastructure or basic services does not have the same market expectations that a businessman or a fashion designer focused on European markets and trends. However both of them participate within the same sector. Theoretically TF should be used to have a vision of science, technology and its possible applications for development, as a tool for planning in public and private organizations. However due early capabilities in most Latin-American countries the use of this instrument is still a challenge. Applying a TF study by using tools on anticipatory periods of 5– 8 years and involving numerous stakeholders and experts could be hard to apply, especially in countries with limited institutional framework (public and private) and weak governance structures. The camelids/textiles and the medicinal plants are traditional sectors in Bolivia and in the Andean Region. We expose their main characteristics with a short presentation of their global value chain (GVC) that shape the main relationships between actors (Gereffi et al., 2005). Based on presentation of Tran et al. (2013) we can illustrate the camelids sector in three different groups of actors (cf. Fig. 1). The first one is made up of farmers dedicated to breeding and fiber production with very limited resources. This is the most vulnerable group where there is a lack of technological assistance, especially focused on genetic improvement and fiber quality. This lack of capacities responds also a strategy of economic diversification or pluriactivity that forces rural communities to change of economic activity as a poverty resilience strategy. In this point it is important to mention the role of rural intermediaries that can hold up to 80% of revenues within the fiber commercialization. The second group is comprised by industrialization of fibers composed by few existing medium and large enterprises which use more sophisticated machinery and equipment for carding, combing standardization and dying to produce mainly tops, knitting and clothing. These enterprises develop little research, with limited capacity for technological innovation for textile and clothing industry and little added value on the products; therefore most are exported as fiber or yarn. The third group is about commercialization actors mainly performed by international agents or local companies with weak management systems that have limited access to position textile camelids in international markets. The sector only covers less than 1% of international fiber market and has not achieved to create an “Andean brand”. This is because there are weak communication channels between GVC actors. Universities run research programs mainly focused on primary production, but without a significant impact on rural communities' capacities. Additionally NGO's and International Cooperation Agencies are still financing programs on the sector but the challenge still remains to make them sustainable. Regarding the productive chain of medicinal plants in the Andean region (cf. Fig. 2) it can be noticed that the sector is based on informal collectors. This is probably the main reason for the absence of production data. These difficulties prevent an idea of the overall market situation in countries like Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador that limit the analysis and must be reduced to isolated data about certain products. The abundant biodiversity posed by Andean countries provides enormous medicinal resources (see Table 1). The market of medicinal plants can be divided in two. Local markets in Andean countries where plants are commonly used (80% in Bolivia and 50% in Peru) and international markets connected with natural products such as perfumes and cosmetics.

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

M. Cespedes Quiroga, D.P. Martin / Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

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Fig. 1. Camelids global value chain.

One aspect that affects the demand of this kind of products is the absence of scientific, phytochemicals, cytotoxicity, genotoxicity and clinical studies that could support its worldwide and general use for therapeutic purposes. Additionally it is necessary to mention strict regulatory control procedures in developed countries. The current Government has prioritized on its development programs support to vulnerable rural communities. This category includes those dedicated to activities like gathering of plants or Camelids breeding. This support consists of developing their technical capabilities and to increase their participation in local and international markets in order to balance economic profits. However deploying a wide variety of instruments to support is not an easy task since these communities have limited

absorptive capacities (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). On the other hand their economic activity is not only limited to the gathering of plants or to breeding. Indeed, their diversification strategy to minimize their risks forces them to have different economic activities which go from agriculture, informal commerce and others depending on the season of the year. In the case of Bolivia, national government has empowered social and rural sectors and some of these sectors are having and increasing participation in the discussion of policy making (Andersson and Gibson, 2007; Faguet and Sanchez, 2008). However priorities are focused on providing basic services such as access to energy, transport infrastructure, or telecommunications. Private sector is also in an early stage of its development even if some of them are export oriented

Fig. 2. Medicinal plants global value chain.

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

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Table 1 Biodiversity Andean countries (UNIDO, 2008). Country

Number of plant species

Number of medicinal plants

Bolivia

20,000

Ecuador

16,000

Peru

22,000

1000 (estimated) 216 (officially accepted) 500 (known) 125 (commercialized) 1500 (classified) 77 (most important)

companies. In developed countries private companies use Technological Foresight (TF) studies for business strategy planning and for long-term technology investments (Miller and O'Leary, 2007; Zweck et al., 2008). However for Bolivian local companies, that doesn't have Research and Development (R&D) units and plan mainly with a short term vision, a TF exercise is hard to understand. However for Bolivia, the TF projects expected to understand better the dynamic of both sectors and then define some public and private interventions in order to establish a road map and distribute its responsibilities between different actors. Later we will discuss about the progress and achievement of the stated objectives.

2. Studying difficulties and challenges of TF in two Bolivian traditional sectors: model and methodology 2.1. Conceptual background: innovation trap and institutional context in developing countries 2.1.1. The concept of “trap” This concept was initially proposed by Levitt and March (1988) to emphasize that “learning as its own trap”. With the change of the contexts (scientific, technologic, social …) organization need to be able to learn to unlearn in order to realign and if necessary to create new routines. Or with its cumulative experiences a firm “learn more and more about a specialized routine” (Cohen and Levinthal, 1989) what inhibit the learning process and impede to identify new opportunities (Christensen, 1997). Some routines of learning can then become inadequate and be the cause of a “maladaptive specialization” (Levinthal and March, 1993). This myopia in the learning process can lead to a competence trap (Levitt and March, 1988), to a failure or success trap (Levinthal and March, 1993), or even to a renewal trap when the organization focuses mainly on the exploration phases (Volberda and Lewin, 2003; Walrave et al., 2011). Organization learning can therefore encounter some serious limitation fundamentally because “organizations find it harder to learn from experience as experience grows”. (Michael and Palandjian, 2004).

2.1.2. Innovation trap and mode of innovation in developing countries However, in developing countries the lack of innovation is not above all in relation with the “myopia of learning” and with the “maladaptive R&D activities” as mentioned previously. Some authors try to explain the low level of innovation and growth in some countries by the “insufficient entrepreneurial incentive” (Baland and Francois, 1996). However the entrepreneurial process is not an automatic self-generating process. Furthermore in developing countries the innovation doesn't mean necessary the conception of new products and the search for a patent strategy (sustain growth with new products). The innovation is more associated with the track of better productivity process by reducing the cost (productivity of inputs used in production) and/or increasing the qualities of the products (final products) (Prahalad, 2014). Furthermore in the two cases studied of Bolivia the projects don't focus to create a transitory monopoly situation based on patent. The main target is to create and to capture, by a collaborative activity of the actors, a more important part of the added value of the value chain of the sector.

2.1.3. Innovation in developing countries and formal institutions The interactions between the institutional characteristics and the organization and efficiency of the economic activity have been studied through different conceptual frameworks (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991; Scott and Meyer, 1995; Williamson, 1985). Recent studies highlight for instance the role of institutional profile on the SMEs performance (Rus and Iglic, 2005) or entrepreneurship practices (Manolova et al., 2008). The normative institutional pressures can also stimulate the firms to engage in environmental innovation (Berrone et al., 2013). However the influence of institutional incentives at the macro level isn't neither linear nor homogenous and may result in diverse enterprise's' responses (Kogut et al., 2002; Leca and Naccache, 2006; Lee, 2011; Oliver, 1991). In the multiplicity of the researches to date we will mainly focus on the role of the formal institutions. They correspond to various devices which features – clarity of regulation, importance and effective application of the legal system, reputation of the university education system, role given to the capital investment … - affect the enterprise practices (Arregle et al., 2013; Cassiman and Veugelers, 2006; Kuemmerle, 1999). Some authors also underline the importance of taking into account the spatial implementation (local, regional, national) of these institutions (Arregle et al., 2013). Indeed these institutions can underpin the structuring of market – and not merely of its deficiencies - and they may classically also enable the reduction of the information asymmetry in the trade relations (Globerman and Shapiro, 2003). Some recent studies analyze the relationships between the constraints more or less high of the institutional context and the practices and performances of companies operating in developing countries, enterprises studied being most often MNE (Arregle et al., 2013; Child and Tsai, 2005; Peng et al., 2008; Zhao, 2006). In our research a central issue is to identify some formal institutions that can play a central role in setting up a virtuous circle of innovation for two traditional activities. 2.2. Model of analysis We assume in this paper that analyzing TF (Technological Foresight) project in developing countries required to take into account 3 dimensions. The main difficulty is to ensure that these three dimensions converge, in their temporal and spatial dimensions, in satisfactory conditions. The first dimension is the characteristic of the socio-technical regime. The definition of this concept may vary according to the authors, the divergences concerning in particular the inclusion or exclusion of the “mutual embeddedness” between actors and institutions (Markard and Truffer, 2008). Given our study object we will stick here the definition developed by Geels (2002) in his early works and whose A. Smith et al. (2010) propose the following summary “Socio-technical regimes are structures constituted from a co-evolutionary accumulation and alignment of knowledge, investments, objects, infrastructures, values and norms that span the production-consumption divide” (Smith et al., 2010, p 441). This definition makes possible to differentiate analytically some characteristics of the socio-technical regime explaining the innovation traps from the role of institutional dimensions that could underpin the development of a virtuous circle of innovation in traditional sectors. The second dimension is precisely the institutional contexts, and merely the formal institutions (i.e. regulatory control, government agencies, law …). Bolivia, as other Latin America countries, are characterized by their formal institution weaknesses (Machado et al., 2011). In Bolivia for example the Universities don't put the emphasis toward the research activities while they are the only actor that have the capabilities to do it, and simultaneously the productive activities are made by micro and SME with very little absorptive capacity (Vega-Jurado et al., 2008). The cost of using the financial system wouldn't appear as incentive for the borrowers (Brock and Rojas Suarez, 2000). However some more recent researches stress at the opposite the structuring and positive effects of formal institutions, especially at the local level (Andersson and Agrawal, 2011; Cronkleton et al., 2011). The TF projects

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

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Fig. 3. Conceptual grid of analysis.

initiated by the United Nation for “Camelids & Textiles” and “Medicinal plants” take part of these last analyses and devote attention to the central role of formal institutions to ensure that a virtuous circle of innovation could take progressively place in traditional sectors. The third dimension of our model relates to the value chain which takes into account the whole activities from the production to supply of goods and services. In terms of macro sequences, three types of operations are generally considered: production, transformation, distribution/sales. The study of the forms of coordination – of governance (Gereffi et al., 2005) – at each step of the value chain enable a better understanding of the decision making process by the different actors, as pointed by Giuliani et al. (2005): “what produce”, “in which quantities”, “at what moment”, “how and eventually at what price”. The reasoning in terms of “Global Value Chain” allows integrating the development of international market. In particular, it appears a possibility of upgrading – process, product, functional (Humphrey and Schmitz, 2002)– from the leaders to the small local producers. The knowledge of the activities generating the most value and the aptitude to reorganize around them is a critical point. The researches stress that this capacity to catch value is also dependent of the chain governance (Humphrey and Schmitz, 2002). Nevertheless the results remain contrasting for the Latin America SMEs (Giuliani et al., 2005). As pointed out by Humphrey and Schmitz (2002) “clusters in developing countries may be specialized in production activities, playing little role in product design, marketing or branding”. It's why the actors' capacity to (re)organize themselves around the most retributive activities, as well as their capacities to modify the mode of governance, are central points for the developments of the sectors. These capacities depend in part of the socio-technical regimes characteristics, but also of the formal institutions in which actor's interactions are involved. The study grid of this analysis interconnecting these three dimensions “socio-technical regime”, “institutional dimensions” and “value chain” is shown in Fig. 3. It should be highlighted that the relationships between the socio technological regime and the Global Value Chain (GVC) are marked, for developing countries, by contradictories tensions whose resolution is not easy. The first tension is about the pluriactivity. It can be considered as a rational strategy of reducing risk in context of resources scarcity. However this rationality can also dissuade actors – producers or merchants – to prioritize their work around one activity that would become the primary source of income. In other words in context of shortage, and without an institutional support or a system of insurance,

specialization in only one productive activity leads to increase the vulnerability risk. The transition period from pluriactivity to monoactivity isn't necessarily the most difficult. Indeed the phase change can be managed by insurance systems and institutional support. The fundamental difficulty is that, in a developing country, the specialization in one segment of a GVC is not necessary a winning strategy for all the stakeholders. In one hand the specialization can lead to deconstruct the old forms of solidarities which had enabled communities to survive in adverse contexts, and the institutional and competitive frameworks are not necessary been made to compensate the weakening of this traditional support. On the other hand the integration in world market's necessary moves and transforms the governance forms of the value chain in a direction that is not always positive for developing countries in general, and for the most deprived people of the latter in particular (Bair and Palpacuer, 2015). Consideration should also be given to a more accurate assessment of the consequences of some of the GVC on environmental degradation and sustainable natural resources management. The following table (see Table 2) provides a short synthesis of the main researches on these contradictories tensions in developing countries. On the basis of these different factors, we propose to organize our study around 5 main research proposals (RP). RP1: The existence of innovation trap impedes a virtuous circle of innovation for traditional sectors, whatever the public policy put in place. The precise identification of the dimensions involved in the innovation trap, and their interactions, is a prerequisite for any public policy for developing traditional sectors. An integrated vision (economic, social, and territorial) is here required. RP2: Given the characteristics of the socio-technical system (extreme poverty, low level of training …) the people from rural areas can't solve by themselves the innovation traps. That requires the involvement of institutions at national or regional level. RP3: The adversity of the context can dissuade people of rural area to put in place organizations (cooperatives, associations …) whose finality would be to progressively structure their activity around one main value chain. The specialization in vulnerability context, and without institutional support, can be perceived as a risk taking, while the pluriactivity is a way to diminish this risk and can be considered as a resilience strategy.

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

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M. Cespedes Quiroga, D.P. Martin / Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

Table 2 Pluriactivity and specialization issues in developing countries. In developing countries Pluriactivity

Specialization

A resilience strategy in vulnerability context

A risky strategy when focused on one main GVC

Articles

Area studied/country

Articles

Ellis (1998)

Rural livelihood/sub-Saharan Africa Tran et al. (2013)

Ellis (2000)

Rural livelihoods/synthesis article

Gelcich et al. (2005

Artisanal fishers/Chile

Schneider and Niederle (2010)

Family farmers/Brazil

Alinovi et al. (2010)

Family farmers/Kenya

Sectors

Vietnam's shrimp farming industry. GVC has the unanticipated effect of marginalizing small-scale farmers and traders. Phillips (2011) GPN (Global Production Network) can generate and perpetuate poverty, marginalization and vulnerability Bair and Werner (2011) Global commodity production in La Laguna in Mexico: a process of disinvestment and dispossession (massive land expropriation) In the case of cotton-textile GVC Humphrey and Schmitz Clusters insert into global value chains can generate a risk of disabling (2002) local-level upgrading efforts. Rousseau et al. (2015) Market globalization …. only a weak impact on the regional shea nut supply chain in western Burkina Faso Ederer et al. (2016) Role of finance of commodity derivative markets on volatile commodity prices.

RP4: If institutional intervention is essential to resolve the innovation traps, some temporal and/or spatial unfit between the formal institutions and what is required to support some critical segments or processes of the value chain of the traditional sectors can limited or impede a virtuous circle of innovation. RP5: In developing countries, the insertion of traditional activities in global value chain does not necessarily involve a reduction of poverty from rural area people, nor more that the sustainability (economic, social, and environmental) of these activities at middle term. In effect it all depends of the evolution of the governance forms between the different actors of the global value chain. 2.3. Methology and data collection The data come from two main sources. First from a work carry out by expert panels (6 experts for Medicinal Plants and 9 experts for Textile Camelids) as part of the different workshops organized by United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) under the UNIDO's Foresight Program for Latin America. Intermediate and final reports have been published and have been provided to the Bolivian Vice-Ministry of

Science and Technology (Informe, 2010). These different documents constitute our first source. In a complementary way contact has been made with Bolivian actors who have took part as coordinators and counter parts in the projects as Science and Technology Vice-Ministry public officials. One of them is coauthor of this article. These persons have therefore on internal knowledge of these two projects, as well as of their further developments, whatever their forms. Indeed a project, or one of its components, may not have been developed as such, but the lessons learned can be useful for other projects or actions (Arino and de la Torre, 1998; Sitkin, 1992). Given the multiplicity of the variables which could be taken into account the study model (Fig. 3) enables us to order and to link some of the most significant elements. We operationalized the main concepts in the following way. Socio-technical regime has been mainly identified through the study of the interactions between variables – production techniques, knowledge, actors, infrastructures - that “span the production-consumption divide” (Smith et al., 2010) and by pluriactivity and the threshold effect of social capital. These elements explain the innovation traps. For the study of the institutional context we have focused for each project on one example particularly illustrative of the lack of formal institutions, absence which constitute “blocking factors”. These factors can't be suppressed just by the actions of the actors.

Fig. 4. Innovation trap and self-reinforcing effects.

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

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The proposed analysis had been assessed and validated by other actors of the Bolivian Vice-Ministry of Science and Technology, external to the TF projects, what ensure of its relevance. 3. With the benefit of hindsight what difficulties and challenges? Main results 3.1. Innovation traps related to the socio-technical regime We will focus on two of them particularly representative, the selfreinforcing effect between variables and threshold effect of social capital. 3.1.1. Innovation trap as self-reinforcing effect between variables The combined effects of the interactions between different dimensions of the Bolivian socio-technical regime constitute a serious impediment to the innovation process. The identification of these “black holes” is also a way to underline the implicit assumptions required by the innovation process itself. As illustrated in Fig. 3 designed from the “textiles from camelid fibers” case, a vicious circle is created. The herds are badly driving which entails a genetic code degeneracy and a poor levels of general health. This one is further exacerbated by the bad quality and the shortage of food, above all in drought period, increasingly frequent. This translates by a decline in the quality and in the level of wool produced, and therefore by a progressive reduction of the incomes. The picture of the breeder and of his/her work is thus degraded in a context of deficiency of the infrastructures (water, electrification, etc.). The young people drop out a profession that is becoming almost exclusively done by the elders. We have thus a reinforcement of negative feedbacks that produce a lock in phenomenon characteristic of the innovation trap and simultaneously a lack of positive feedbacks and of redundancy of these positive feedbacks that make very difficult to put in place a virtuous curve of learning. Fig. 4 sums up this sequencing. For the medicinal plants the figure above is not directly applicable but we can find some related issues. To take just of few examples for the medicinal plants there is above all collection from wild-growing plants, without necessary taken into account their qualities and good sanitary conditions. There are therefore little agricultural activities, and when it exists, it is insufficient in quantities and the harvested products quality is heterogeneous. In the same way with that for camelids, there are limited researches to improve the processes of production. Moreover, there are some specific problems of the land ownership, in relation with the socio and cultural organization of the community, that affect the efficiency of the production/gathering activities. On the other hands, as for the breeders, the plant “producers” have limited knowledge about how to select and to store their products in order they keep them in good sanitary conditions. The marketing policy presents, as for the textile products, many limitations. The country trademark is nascent and there is no information about the niche markets. The enterprises don't have a prospective vision and are still working with traditional methods. On the other hands, if there are norms on the transformation process of the products, their applications aren't really efficient. Lastly, there are very few specialized laboratories on chemical analyses. An advantage of this analysis is to underline the systemic effect between variables that reinforce the innovation trap. Conceptually and in practice this means that it isn't possible to find a sustainable solution by acting only on one dimension. As underline above we have a double challenges, institutional and in relation to the social network characteristics. This also mean that we need to take into account the complexity of the temporal interactions between the dimensions involved in the change process because the relevant time scale isn't necessary the same for each of them. For instance acting to improve the genetic degeneration requires the genetic assessment of the herds at the regional or national level that is to say at the formal institutions. The identification of the good sires and the organization of corrective actions by the “breeders”, what

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suppose they recognize the “importance” of the degeneration problem and progressively adopt new practices, requires to act at the socio-technical regime. Similarly, to control the quality – non toxicity, active principles …- of the medicinal plants assume the existence of norms as well as the existence of laboratories able to control their applications. We also find for the both sectors – breeders and plant “producers/gatherers” - problems of professionalization of their practices, and therefore the potential role of training structures. 3.1.2. Innovation trap and threshold effect of social capital Social capital is generally defined as “the sum of the actual and potential resources embedded within, available through, and defined from the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit” (Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998 p. 243). Different forms of social capital and consequently of embeddedness have been distinguished such as social capital resulting from relationships within group (“bonding”) or between groups (“bridging”) (Laursen et al., 2012). One very interesting point is that the characteristics of social capital can induce a phenomenon of underembeddness or overembeddedness (Uzzi, 1997). We speak of overembeddedness when all organizations are interconnected through embedded links. One of the consequences is that redundancy of the links reduces the probability of conception of new ideas (Uzzi, 1997). The findings of Edelman et al. (2004) or Laursen et al. (2012) corroborate this analysis. For instance the overembeddedness of a network in the local environment can negatively affect the involvement of the firm in foreign markets (Laursen et al., 2012). Albeit less studied the underembedded is conversely associated with less trust, less “fine-grained information” and less “joint problem solving arrangements” (Uzzi, 1997 p. 62). We can illustrate this phenomenon of underembedded at the meso level in the case “Textiles – Camelids”, but also for “Medicinal plants” although to a much lesser extent. With regards to the “textiles from camelid fibers” case, the production is realized by micro communities geographically scattered, or even by isolated breeders, represented under the National Association of Camelids Producers (ANAPCA) which goes from local, regional until national associations. Despite the producers are formally organized under ANAPCA, there is still a need to strength their production management processes which among others results by an atomized supply of wool production (step 1 cf. Fig. 5). In other words in these regions with hard living conditions, there is a mutual support when some hard knocks occur (Adler and Kwon, 2002; Morales Ayma, 2014). But actually the diversity of languages (Quechua, Aymara, …) and the pluriactivity, but also infrastructure problems as a result of the geographical configurations, aren't facilitating factors of cooperation to share common projects between breeders with over 50% are illiterate. The characteristics are very close for the medicinal plants. The national reference is Bolivian Society of Traditional Medicine (SOBOMETRA). This society existing from 1984 is a society engaged in research of ancient knowledge on the use of medicinal plants and other medicinal practices, in indigenous communities. However it is also important to strength production capacities in order to reduce fragmentation of the production and/or to define common objectives regarding the sales. The consequences of this fragmented supply are numerous. There is the lack of supply structure both in terms of quantity or of quality standard. It makes additionally very difficult the planning of a stable volume of quality production. There is also a lack of bargaining power of breeders (TF “Camelids”) and producers/gatherers (TF “medicinal plants) with other partners of the sector. The transformation phase is also very little structured. Strictly speaking in Bolivia there are not real intermediaries playing a real role of collection centers between the breeders and the customer as we can see in Peru. By way of illustration there isn't real spinning, but enterprises that do not have the equipment necessary for a production of quality. All these factors limit again the possibility to structure quickly a sector. The sale phase is also affected by numerous limiting factors. Intermediary local sellers reduce margin profits for local producers by

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

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Fig. 5. Stages in the structuration of the social capital.

discouraging producers to improve quality of the fiber (e.g. genetic improvement) since they will always receive the same price for their products. There is therefore no positioning of the Alpaca or Llama mark and no more than design activities that would highlight the traditional values of Bolivia in contemporary world. In addition the local industries have limited capacity to deliver large amounts of the same product with international standard features. It means a small batch requested by a European marketer can represent the annual production of a South American SME's scale of production. Finally there is a lack of geographic information system to provide updated information on prices, demands for local and international markets but also on national and international fairs and events. The “textiles from camelid fibers” and “Medicinal plants” cases stress the very low level of cooperation at each segment of the sector. We are at the step 1 (cf. Fig. 5) for the component “breeders” and “producers/ gatherers” and between the steps 1 and 2 for the components “Transform” and “Sell”. It is interesting to note, as comparison point, that the coca sector in Bolivia has been able to structure through numerous struggles while the initial conditions were very adverse (micro-farms, expropriation of lands, intervention of the Unites States as part of the struggle against the cocaine the coca tea…)(Morales Ayma, 2014). Even if the importation of the coca leaves is forbidden in the majority of the countries, the coca sector has become a very dynamic sector in Bolivia. 3.2. Institutional unfit in relation with the both TF projects The cases of the degeneracy of the genetic code of the camelids, and of the barriers to the exportation of the medicinal plants are illustrative examples of the central role that should be played by the formal institutions. This issue is closely related with the topic of the quality of the products (textiles, medicinal plants…) and consequently related with mastering production processes. 3.2.1. Camelids & textiles Numerous factors explain the poor quality of camelid wool (alpaca, llama and vicuña wool) (cf. Fig. 4). The case of the degeneracy of the genetic code is interesting because it highlights the necessary and inevitable role of some formal institutions. Genetic control of the herds is associated with technical, heath and economic benefits. However it is supposedly a set of actions that would be difficult to implement only by the breeders: census of all animals, constitution of genealogical trees, and rational

management of the herd to avoid inbreeding. But these different actions require to be implemented in a practical way to act at different levels. Firstly at regional or national level interface structures have to be created in order to collect and analyze DNA data of the herd. Then at the (inter)communal level a monitoring of herds with technical assistance providing a close presence to the breeders has to be put in place. Finally the breeders also have to accept the change in the mode and in the organization of the breeding flocks, which is not necessarily the simplest. In the view of dispersion of the herd, of the difficulty of travelling because of the distance and of the geographical situation it seems difficult to control the reproduction only by moving the “spawners”. The simpler solution would be to develop the insemination practices what suppose the creation of one or several insemination centers, which generates other difficulties such the presence of specialists who have to be trained and paid, and the insemination cost. This last one will be more easily accepted by the breeders if the cost is supported by the insemination centers. All these actions appear to be necessary to structure and to develop the camelid sector. Nevertheless they required time, probably several years, resources and a coherence in their spatial deployment. Conceptually the challenge is to understand the different modes of co-evolution of the formal institutions and the socio-technical regimes. What complicates the analysis is that these co-evolutions deploy across different scales in time and space. If the TF allow to set up a “vision for the future”, it involves in a second time to develop a finer-grained analysis of the different pathways incorporating the multiplicity of the temporal and spatial scales. This finer-grained analysis would allow to identify different scenarios more specific of nested subcomponents such as “(inter)communal vs regional or national” and/or “breeders vs interface structures”. That could also help to detail the hierarchical and priority linkages between these subcomponents taking into account their spatial and temporal dimensions. This appears as an issue of central importance that in Bolivia, for historical reason, a lot of things still need to be built and/or reinforces on the institutional dimension. 3.2.2. Medicinal plants The TF of the medical plants is also, but for different reasons, a very good example of the difficulties for traditional production to be present not only in the local market but also on the international markets. We summarize some critical points from the reports (UNIDO, 2008). To import in Europe the products of non-animal origin must comply to different obligations such as maximum level of contaminant, maximal

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

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concentration of pesticides, etc. Furthermore the UE strictly regulate the importations of novel foods. Is considered as novel food everything that wasn't consumed before May 1997 (CE - No 258/97). To be accepted the novel food must undergo a long and costly homologation process, which again can't be realized by small local producers. With regards to the phyto-therapeutic products they can be subject to detailed national regulations as in the case of France, Germany or Italy. Some similarities constraints exist with the USA, mainly with the anti-bioterrorism legislation. Indeed United States require recordkeeping which involve a very strict traceability at the different links of value chain: method of cultivation, gathering, process of finished products … Furthermore this traceability must be kept for a period of 6 months to 1 year. These requirement don't fit with the patterns of production and of sales of the small producers. Their usual local market is mainly organized around informal rules. Entering into new practices to be able to export medicinal plants would supposed to codify everything, which would constitute a radical change, and consequently would be difficult to implement at short term. One notes that these medicinal plants have always been widely used in Bolivia in rural or urban areas. Some of them are subject of industrial process: the coca leaf for instance is sold in single-serving sachet, as for the tea. However these plants have been little tested by scientific researches - cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, preclinical and clinical studies …which constitutes a major brake to export. Again the institutional dimension is indispensable to address these constraints, challenges that the small producers are unable to take up by their own means. On the other hands if foreign pharmaceutical laboratories analyze the Bolivian plants and identify from them new molecules with interesting therapeutic properties, they risk to patent and prevent their exploitation by Bolivian actors. The placement of traditional products in the international market should not be considered without an integrative and strategic vision. The visions of the future, once established, require to precise the spatial and temporal linking of the institutional processes to overcome the barriers identified. For instance the creation of laboratories for studying the non-toxicity and the therapeutic efficacy, and to identify the side effects is an essential prerequisite of any exportation strategy of medical plants. In a subsidiary manner, the proper functioning of such laboratories suppose, as underlined before, trained personnel and the proper functioning of the Bolivian education system. This is the only way that the Bolivian products might find credibility in the international market. Furthermore if the intellectual property issue isn't raised and resolved, the product might be copied or appropriated by others. To sum up the transition of a local market to an international market is not just a simple matter supply and demand. This raises a series of related issues very complex which can't be solved by the small producers alone. Indeed it is very difficult for them to apprehend the rules conditioning and organizing commercial exchanges depending on the geographical areas. The intervention of the formal institutions is here essential and as previously mentioned the temporal and spatial coherence of these actions is the central issue. 4. Discussion: what we have learnt from both projects? 4.1. About our initial proposals This research underline the interest of the proposals initially formulated. There exist some innovation traps linked to the characteristics of the Bolivian socio-technical regime that impede to set up a virtuous circle of innovation (RP1). The effects of some characteristic variables of the socio-technical regime – traditional production techniques, weak level of expertise and knowledge, pluriactivity, little infrastructure, no investment, very low level of absorptive capacity … - are cumulative and mutually reinforcing, and end up to create an innovation trap. On the other hand the weakness of formal institutions is also a blocking factor (RP2, RP3). Certain steps in the value chain are inescapable – to

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regulate genetic code degeneracy of the herds, to study the toxicity and the therapeutic effects of the medicinal plants, etc. – and the characteristics of the socio-technical regime not allow one action driving directly by the actors themselves. Only the actions of the institutional context can undo these locking points (RP4). The transition from local value chain to international global value chain raises some critical issues on the evolution of forms of governance between stakeholders (RP5).

4.2. TF in traditional sector in Bolivia: learning curve from a practical point of view For Vice-Ministry of Science and Technology public officials, the TFs have been the occasion to acquire new expertise. The construction of the “visions of the future” and the conception of road maps constitute some artefacts enabling to articulate a “political visions” of middle term and the conditions to put in place to be able to realize, in practice, this “political vision”. This requires a more strategic analysis leading to some “big pictures” (Endsley, 2001). However these “big pictures” are here the result of a work by iterations of expert groups. It is interesting to note that the current work of Bolivian Government Agencies refocuses the development of the Textile and Medicinal Plants in a more global context. The analysis integrates now dimensions such as tourism (pluriactivity) or water contamination (cf. figure Annex 4 “Territorial Complex and its Relation with Productive Clusters”). This should allow to respond in an integrated manner to the various factors explaining the innovation traps. The challenge is to be able to ensure at middle terms the sustainability of traditional activities by the development of a virtuous circle of innovation. However the “vision for the future” is also a guide for the action. This supposes to deploy a finer-grained analysis in order to precise some practical action-levers. For the two TF projects studied, several actions have been realized.

4.2.1. As regards to the TF “medicinal plants” Regarding the “medicinal plants” project, in 2005 a group of Bolivian researchers at Universidad Mayor de San Andres (UMSA) in La Paz, established an agreement with a Bolivian pharmaceutical companies in order to develop phytotherapeutic products in value chains and strategic partnership based on research and development. In 2014 as a first product of this agreement it was obtained an anti-inflammatory cream “Chilcaflam” made from an extract of Chilca (Baccharis latifolia) a native plant of the Altiplano and high valleys of our country, which has been described in the traditional medicine as an anti-inflammatory plant whose clinical and scientific studies made by UMSA researchers support the safety and efficacy of its use (Vega and Ortiz, 2012). This experience underlines the possibility and the interest of partnerships between university and private firm. It also point out the time required between the first contact (2005) and the final product ten years later. Actually in the relationships between public and private stakeholders, it is still difficult for instance to reach a consensus between objectives or the modalities of sharing infrastructures and resources. Currently in Bolivia there is no explicit strategy of knowledge and technology transfer and, for a “formal institution” point of view, on the development of services or units dedicated to the transfer practices. Regarding the follow up of TF “medicinal plants” two other actions can be also mentioned. The Ministry of Environment and Water is carrying out a national inventory of research projects in medicinal plants, and the Ministry of Health is carrying out a project under a strategy related to research of ancestral knowledge to strengthen the Bolivian ancestral traditional medicine. One of the components of this last project is focused on medicinal plants research based on scientific evidence and/ or ancestral use. However these two type of actions concern more the setting up of an information system allowing to do an inventory of the actions initiated by local group of actors, but not to set up “formal institutions”.

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

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4.2.2. As regards to the TF “camelid textile” Firstly it should be noted the creation in 2008 of the institution PROBOLIVIA which is a Government Agency under Ministry of Productive Development. PRO BOLIVIA is a decentralized institution that impulses projects of change in all the productive sectors. One of its working areas is focused in Textile. Two Centers were implemented on this area during the last two years. The first one specialized in fiber testing and certification, dying process, product development and fiber research. The second one is oriented to artisanal textile. Its main activities are focused on llama fiber dehairing, Camelids fiber dyeing, and recovery of ancestral knowledge, design and product development. These both centers were proposed under the Road Map UNIDO TF studies. 4.3. What recommendation on TF and STI policy? In addition to the elements previously examined – identification of innovation traps, misfit of institutional actions – we develop here two dimensions usually undervalued while they play, in our opinion, an important role in the success or the failure of the STI policy in developing countries. 4.3.1. Technology foresight for traditional sectors, pluriactivity and poverty The rural world is characterized by a seasonality of the activities. Sufficient resources to live throughout the year can be obtained through specialization in profitable mono activity, but this is seldom the case in rural area of Bolivia where pluriactivity is the rule. Several situations can be distinguished. In a first case we can have a complementarity of the activities between the seasons such as plant cultivation with different growing seasons or working in craft activities. However if such complementarity isn't possible, the following cases can be identified. Firstly one person can share is work time on working day or working week between several activities. A secondly possibility requires to change of unit of analysis and to consider pluriactivity not on one person but on a nuclear or extended family, or inside a community. This second possibility translates by a relative specialization of each of members of the unity. In each of these configurations the capacity to structure a value chain will be different, it will be particularly reduced in the last case. These issues ask the (old) question of the relationships between specialization and process efficiency for structuring an activity (Smith, 1776). As pointed out earlier in situation of extreme poverty pluriactivity is a resilience strategy. The public development policy of traditional sectors should be based on this fact – there is pluriactivity – and to initiate differentiated innovation framework depending of the characteristics of the regions and the methods of organizing of the rural communities. For traditional sectors public policy has to incorporate the fact that the specialization process for people of rural areas could be a risk taking position with some risk of irreversibility in case of increasing climate change or market slump. It is therefore the whole conception of the value chain that is at stake, with organizational arrangements and perimeters of intervention of the GVC which should vary according to the characteristics of each region. Thus, in the face of the globalization of the markets, the regional – local – issues remains a central topic, and bring up the risk for the poorest rural area of a “smart specialization” not properly understood. 4.3.2. STI public policy and morphogenesis of the GVC in traditional sectors We realize that, whatever the case envisaged, the importance of the issue of the mode of structuration of the value chain. We will focus on this topic by using the expression “morphogenesis of the value chain”. Indeed we think that it is possible to identify some main dimensions “that predispose organizational actors toward some specific courses of actions” (Willmott, 2000), in other words around which we can organize a probable evolution of the value chain; some options being possible and involving trajectories partially differentiated. To study the insertion of this pluriactivity in a GCV, we suggest to take into account 4 key dimensions which are in interactions in a

more integrative model. Following the work of Gereffi et al. (2005) the first dimension would be that relating the complexity of information and knowledge transfer between each component of the GCV. Indeed, if we compare the exchanges on a local market between a producer and a seller of medicinal plants, and the transaction in international markets, the requirements won't be the same. In an international market it should be ensured to have constant product quality standards, issued within a specified time limit, etc., which make crucial the conception and the implementation of a GVC. In contrast on the local market, the relationships remain very informal. The second dimension relates the scientific and technological level required according to the complexity of the value chain. Here again it is possible to anticipate that more involved we are in global value chain (GVC) with issues on quality requirement, no toxicity, patents … more the scientific and technological capacities are required. The third dimension relates to the choice of the intervention perimeter of the value chain which can be local, regional, national or international. We will have again a growing requirement which involves a greater complexity of the value chain. It is therefore likely that these three dimensions listed are in interdependence: the higher up in complexity, the higher will be the scientific and technological requirements, and the more effective can be the “positioning” in the world market. For instance the exportation of medical plants with the USA antibioterrorism legislation requires a very precise monitoring of all the process of production/transformation/distribution and of control of the supply chain. This requires scientific and technological level without comparison with the simple fact to sell in local market. The fourth dimension is an outcome of the three previous. It is the issue of the resources that can be generated for the benefits of the rural area according to the type of GVC (from local to international). Here again different hypothesis can be formulated. First, it is probable that the value chain structuration from a local to an international level needs to introduce news actors with financing capacity and allow to reach required critical production sizes. The issue can involve the eviction of people initially engaged in the local chain (Phillips, 2011); therefore specialization could have led to a deconstruction of the primitive solidarity. On the same model positioning on the world market introduce additional actors who can more easily “unravel” all the previous structuration realized at the regional or national level (Bair and Werner, 2011). For these reasons moving from the national to the international level is not automatically associated with a poverty reduction of the rural area (Levy, 2008; Schneider and Niederle, 2010). It can, in the same manner, answer the question about sustainability in the middle and long term. It can be used as an example the consequences on the Aral Sea of extensive irrigation of the cotton fields. Thus this analysis, which has only a heuristic value, can be synthesize in the following way (cf. Fig. 6). We realize that this approach in terms of morphogenesis allow us to highlight the interest, for public policy, to study precisely for each segment of the value chain, its complexity, its scientific and technologic assets and also its changes in governance forms when we go from a local to a national and international global value chain. The governance mode is clearly a structuring aspect for the development topic and its expected sustainability. Future STI policies need to assess different possible GVC trajectories according the initial characteristic of each component of the traditional sector, and by taking better account of the rural area characteristics confronted very often with extreme poverty. For instance there is some governance risks relating to international extension of the value chain such as the difficulty to control the risk on the price variability that can be due to international speculative movement, as well as the risk of exchange rate variation which will make rural sectors more vulnerable than they would have been before an international structuration of the GVC. Indeed, traditional sectors with a more embryonic value chain and a generalization of the pluriactivity, finally allowed in adverse context to dilute the risk of resource acquisition.

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

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Fig. 6. Morphogenesis of global value chain.

Taking into account recommendations mentioned above, we propose some STI policy recommendations based on current capacities within both sectors (see Table 3): 5. Conclusion: TF in traditional sector in Bolivia: What new steps? Conceptually one of the challenge concerns the transition modalities of a socio-technical regime from one to another. There is a body of research works leading in particular by Geels (2002) et Geels and Schot (2007) on the diverse modalities of transition of these socio-technical regimes. However the conceptual pattern proposed doesn't integrate the specificities associated with the developing countries, in particular the formal institutions weakness and the innovation traps resulting of the socio-technical regime as explained in this article. The main issues to study are related to the dynamic of each dimension – institutions context, socio-technical regime – and the modalities of their articulations for developing countries. As regards to the institutional dimension, a set of recent researches have highlighted its potential role on various levels. For instance it can favor and/or incite the practices of the enterprises (Berrone et al., 2013; Rus and Iglic, 2005) regarding innovation, but also entrepreneurship behaviors (Manolova

et al., 2008) or to play a role in structuring innovative clusters (Fromhold-Eisebith and Eisebith, 2005). For the developing countries it will be interesting to pursue researches done on the challenge of institutional decentralization (Andersson and Agrawal, 2011; Andersson and Gibson, 2007; Faguet and Sanchez, 2008). The aim is to study with more details the possible role of this institutional context to build actors' capacities to organize themselves collectively on each of the segments of the value chain. The local level must be able to co-create solutions with the support of formal institutions. Another central issue is to know to what extent and under what conditions the insertion of traditional productions in the international market can be a solution to the eradication of the poverty. From an analytical point of view two topics can at least be distinguished. Firstly, developing countries involved in the same TF project (Argentina, Bolivia and Peru for “Textiles- Camelids” TF; Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru for “Project medical plants” TF) can be objectively in direct competition on the commercialization of their products. We need to know how these countries can go further than an agreement of façade (Abrahamson and Baumard, 2008) to be able to share knowledge, expertise and other resources in an open international market. Secondly the transition from a local market to an international market is not without risk on the

Table 3 Illustration of camelids and medicinal plants STI policy. Camelids

Medicinal Plants

• Natural resources management strategy (Genetic improvement programs, breeding) built with the participation of local communities. • Strength or create Technological Research Centers to guarantee endogenous technological development and transfer. • Develop international Technical standards and competitive markets for products and services of the value chain • Differentiated technical support and financial services from rural breeders to SMEs and exports local companies • Strong government institutions with policy instruments capable to manage risks for most vulnerable actors within GVC

• • • • •

Andean Community legislation and standard classification of Medicinal Plants. International agreements between Andean countries. Government support to poor areas producers (collectors) Development of new technologies to overcome phyto-sanitary barriers. Strategic alliances between rural communities and local/international companies seeking use of natural ingredients but also interested in technology transfer to local actors. • International marketing strategies to increase global consumption of Andean organic products and for origin denominations and generic brands.

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

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functioning of the traditional communities. It is the issue of the transition management of socio-technical regimes that encourage the economic development while preserving sustainable communities (Postero, 2010; Roxas and Ungson, 2011). From this point of view it will be necessary to study not only how to manage ‘sustainability transition” but also the possible modalities of coexistence of different sociotechnical regimes (Smith et al., 2010) in developing countries such as Bolivia. Acknowledgements The foresight exercises studied in this article are part of the program “Technology Foresight Initiative in Latina America” initiated by UNIDO. It concerns two of them: “The Development and Commercialization of Natural Products of the High Plateau and Central Valleys of the Andean Countries” and “The Future of Andean Products in the Altiplano region and Central Valleys of the Andes: Textiles – Camelids”. The authors would like to thank Matthieu Mandard, Roselyne Mogin-Martin and Florence Palpacuer for very fruitful comments on this paper. Appendix Annex 1. Bolivia (2010): some key characteristics (Source: World Bank, United Nation, Science and Technology Vice-Ministry)

Surface area (sq. km) Population density (people per sq. km of land area) Average age Life expectancy at birth, total (years) Mortality rate, under-5 (per 1000 live births) Reduction extreme poverty (2005–2010) GDP (per capita US$) Expenditure R&D (% of GDP) Main economic sectors

Number of universities Total number of researchers Researchers (per million in the population): Patent applications (2010) - Resident - Non resident Patent granted (2010) - Resident - Non resident School enrollment, primary (% gross) School enrollment, secondary (% gross) Number of internet users

1,098,580 9.1 22 66,3 47 12.8% 2160 0.16 Hydrocarbons, mining, agriculture, SME (textile, leather, wood, handcrafts) 11 public and 41 private universities 1400 153 413 80 333 72 5 67 98 77.5 3 million

Appendix Annex 2. Project textiles- camelids Project Title: “Regional productive chains – the future of products of the Andean high plateau and central valleys – textiles from camelid fibers” Starting date: 2010 Duration: 3 years Project site: Argentina, Bolivia and Peru Brief description: The project proposes a multi-country Technology Foresight study that focuses on raising awareness and building consensus among the key stakeholders to conduct this reorganization in a sustainable manner. The communities in the Andean region of Argentina, Bolivia and Peru are the expected project beneficiaries. The project is financed by the government of Spain. The aim of the project is to assist the participating communities in making decisions on future directions regarding the production of local textile products and their connection to global value chains. The purpose of the project is to identify strategic technology areas for textile

products and its industrial sector in order to raise its competitive advantage and to enable the national textiles products to facilitate the access to regional and global markets. Foresight methods: A common vision of the possible future development of the region through the improvement of the participation of local camelids fibers based textile products in its economy. A technology road-mapping indicating how to strengthen the related productive chain. The main output was a foresight study for textile products and the related productive chain. The four actions of the program are: 1. Creation of a Regional Secretariat (first step in the creation of a Regional Observatory) for Andean camelids 2. Implementation of good practices in the breeding and selection of alpacas 3. The creation or strengthening of a reference laboratory 4. Development of a quality Andean brand. Source: Project of Argentina, Bolivia and Peru; United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Appendix Annex 3. Project medicinal plants Project Title: “The Development and Commercialization of Natural Products of the High Plateau and Central Valleys of the Andean Countries” Starting date: 2008 Duration: 3 years Project site: Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru Brief description: In the context of UNIDO's Foresight Program for Latin America, a Regional Road Map for the development of products of the highlands and central Andean valley regions of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, was prepared. The Road Map concentrated in medicinal plants and nutraceutics. The present Project implements several of the activities defined in that Road Map. The Andean highlands and central valley regions of these countries are characterized by a rich biodiversity but also by extreme poverty conditions. The Road Map aims at supporting the countries' policies and strategies to face such social and economic challenges (development of that areas) by creating improved conditions for primary production, industrial transformation and exports of value added products into a growing world market. The main objectives of this three year Project, corresponding to the visions developed in the Road Map are: 1. The Andean medicine and its products are recognized internationally 2. Consolidate the regional sector research and innovation system 3. Reach the sustainability and the integral development of the productive complex The main outputs contributing to reach the first vision are: 1) a proposal for an improved legal framework on the practice of traditional medicine and the use of its products; 2) a diffusion campaign at international level on the benefits and opportunities of the Andean traditional medicine and its products; an Andean Pharmacopoeia; a Virtual Information Centre; Cooperation networks (trademarks, market studies) and the creation of a Technical Advisory body. The main outputs contributing to reach the second vision are: 1) an operating “regional sector innovation system” and a capacities map and 2) a network of research and innovation centers. The outputs for vision 3 are: 1) best practices manual/s; 2) an infrastructure development plan for a selected number of complexes; 3) trained producers and trainers; and 4) the organization of associations and other associative forms. Source: Project of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru; United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO),

Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023

M. Cespedes Quiroga, D.P. Martin / Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

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Appendix Annex 4. Working document 2015 – Mauricio Cespedes Quiroga - Vice-Ministry of Science and Technology

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Please cite this article as: Cespedes Quiroga, M., Martin, D.P., Technology foresight in traditional Bolivian sectors: Innovation traps and temporal unfit between ecosystems and institutions, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.023