The Telecommunications Restructuring Process in the 90 s : A comparative

1 Introduction The national innovation system (NIS) approach brings an alternative to the traditional view of innovation as a process of radical change in frontier sectors. The NIS approach offers a conceptual instrumental extremely useful for the understanding of the innovation dynamics at local, regional and national levels. However, as emphasized by Cassiolato and Lastres (2000), there are some specificities in the less developed world that should be taken into account if we want to use the concept of NSI in the context of these economies. The instability of the macroeconomic, political, institutional and financial environment, the different historical institutional development and the very systemic and structural relationships between developed and developing economies are among these specificities. The macroeconomic environment in developing countries has proved to be an important constraint to technological development in these countries. In the last decades, most of the firm’s technological strategies in developing countries have