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Introduction The interest in innovation as a driving factor for a growth, competitiveness and well-being is a vision shared among countries in different levels of development. Most countries in the world have a national agenda for innovation, with fairly similar priorities and objectives. This, at least, is true at the rhetorical level. Or to use the words of Gerad De Graaf, head of unit in charge of the Lisbon Strategy at the European Commission, “Everybody agrees that there should be more innovation. I have never met anybody in my life who says that ‘I am against innovation.’ Is anybody against panda bears? Or against Santa Claus?” This does not mean that countries all share the same view regarding what is innovation, why public policy should support it and how to do it. But this means that we are in a “proinnovation” era, even in nonfrontier regions where in the recent past innovation and technological development were expected to appear naturally through trade and foreign investments (ECLAC 2008a, 2008b; Radosevic 2009; OECD 2009; UNIDO 2009). This generalized interest in innovation derives in part from the current context shaped by recently established (information communication technology – ICT) and radically new (biotech and nanotech) technological paradigms which are transforming the way agents (individuals, firms and countries) produce, trade and invest – thus creating a situation in which the possibilities and spaces for innovation are multiple and different from the previous age (think for example about the wide variety of successful business models or the new ways of doing health-related research). © 2012 Renato Boschi and Carlos Henrique Santana editorial matter and selection.