As The Artillery Subsides, A Wave of Innovation?

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I have gone and done it; I have joined the Shopping Mall of Innovation, above.

You will recall how the phrase originated in a paper by two Harvard professors offering a sloppy taxonomy  — the business school always seems to thrive on sloppy taxonomy, muddled metaphors and worn commonplaces, misrecited  — of innovation processes within a corporate incubator setting.

I will refrain from further comment, other than to add that, yes, it is true, I really am working on a backgrounder on the byzantine world of Brazilian high technology R&D funding  and incentives. How hard I am working is another question.

Yesterday, in Valor, for example, I read that Brazil will produce its first home-grown microchip from home-mined materials sometime in 2012 — after delays of more than half a decade. The Brazilians will start modestly with  tracking chip attached to an ear tag attached to a bos indicus indicus — an instance of the magnificent Brahma breed.

Sources neither reliable nor particularly unreliable warn that we should expect an attempt at a unification and simplification of the bureaucratic interface between the venture capitalist and the Brazilian state. The minister of Science and Technology, former São Paulo senator Aloyzio Mercadante, wants BNDES to play a centralizing role.

Or so my daily tip sheet says. Bureaucratic ambitions do not, of course, always come true. But Mercadante is not just a suit in really nice chair.