Innovation in the U.S. pulp and paper industry: Lessons for Brazil

Technological innovation, big and small, as well as domestic and global, has played critical role for the evolution of the modern United States pulp and paper industry since its origins in the early 19th century. New technological knowledge and its implementation, more than anything else, gave entrepreneurs, firms, industries, and whole regions, the ability to create or capture new markets or erect new production hubs, and to forge ahead competitors. The history of innovation in the U.S. pulp and paper industry offers some important lessons for the currently emerging Brazilian pulp and paper industry. Most importantly, it shows that sustained domestic capacity to produce innovations is a critical strategic resource for the long-term national and firm-level competitiveness, and for the industry's survival altogether. Given industry's global woes today, this is far from self-evident, as over-production and capital expenditures often dictate what companies set to do. This lesson reiterates the importance of building broad and embedded sectoral innovation system for the industry, which encompasses variety of actors, objectives and mix of private and public policies.