Abstract:

In the last five years, the government of Ecuador has become aware of the lack of innovation in the industry. This study analyzes how technology and technological knowledge have been managed by organizations through knowledge management (KM) to promote technological innovation processes in business organizations, where an interface between technological resources and innovation has been the competitive intelligence, whose contribution in innovation is analyzed in this work. The objective of the study is to reflect on how KM can contribute to technological innovation in the Ecuadorian industry. The methodology applied in this work consisted of a documentary bibliographic analysis and was divided as follows. In the first part, a theoretical review was made of the concepts of technology and technological knowledge understood as assets that need to be managed for the generation of innovation in organizations; In a second part, the fundamental concepts of the management of technological knowledge and its relationship with competitive intelligence are investigated; In a third stage, a comparative analysis was carried out of the economic resources that in recent years has been devoted to research, development and innovation (R & D + i) between Latin America (LA) and Ecuador; and, finally, it was studied, how the processes of competitive intelligence stimulate technological innovation. The results show that technology and knowledge are tangible and intangible assets, both of them imperative for the management of organizations. In addition, the tools of competitive intelligence could contribute to the entrepreneurship of processes of technological innovation in the Ecuadorian industry. The difference in the number of investments between the countries of strong economies and LA was determined. Particularly in Ecuador, investments in innovation between 2009 and 2014 had an average annual growth of 13.4% and reached 2% of non-oil Gross Domestic Product in the last year of that period. At the end of this work, some challenges are posed that must be taken into account in the future to generate innovation in the industry, considering the participation of different parts of the Ecuadorian society.

Keywords:

Knowledge management, innovation, competitive intelligence, Ecuadorian industry, technology.