Innovation in knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) in Mexico

There is a growing economic role of knowledge intensive business services (KIBS), as they have become engines of economic growth and high quality job creation. However, Mexico has focused mainly on technological innovation, disregarding service innovation and its relationship to technology infrastructure. In the first section of this paper, at national level, an international comparison is made between Mexico and the USA in terms of employment, value added and productivity including the knowledge and technology intensive sectors. For this purpose, national data is aggregated in two sets: goods and services. Services are divided into traditional, intensive knowledge and innovation centered. We divide goods into manufacturing, which comprises low, medium and high technology and the remaining goods sectors, mining and construction, are included in low tech industries while agriculture is dealt with separately. The second part of the paper is a micro level study, surveying thirty five firms identified as KIBS, in order to make a preliminary characterization and look at the types of innovation they are involved in . There is a need for an innovation policy that includes services at macro level considering Mexican´s relatively weak economic structure in high technology goods and innovative and knowledge service sectors.