Coevolution of science and technology and innovation: a three stage model of policies based on the Mexican case

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the coevolution between two arenas, on one side the Science and Technology (S&T)1, and on the other the Innovation (Innov), from a developing country´s perspective. It argues that in the context of the knowledge economy, the coevolution of these arenas is crucial for this type of countries to transit to a development process. The discovery that some Japanese firms as well as firms from Korea and other newly industrializing countries could compete successfully with their United States counterparts contributed to focus the attention of scholars and policy makers on the conditions of a successful catching up process. From the 1980s there has been a sudden increase of books and papers focusing on the function of science, technology and innovation (STI), and on their interrelations, for the development processes.