Software Development for Animal Facility Management: public-private partnership for innovation

Abstract

The article aims to describe the experience of developing a software in a public institution, focused on the management of animal facilities as well as to demonstrate the partnership strategies on developing and exploratory marketing to generate innovation. The qualitative methodology had a descriptive and exploratory approach with data collection, based on the collection and analysis of information from documents recorded throughout the partnership process since the beginning of software development until the end of the commercial partnership and co-development process. Several challenges to make the software available on the market occurred, such as the lack of technological culture of lab animal facility managers; scarce resources of the lab, besides the difficulty of choosing a viable business model for commercialization of the software, since most of the lab animal facilities are of the public sector. Technology transfer is still a challenge for most Brazilian Science, Technology and Innovation Institutions (STIs), with a few specific cases. In this way, the lessons learned in this case of partnership can be useful for managers and researchers involved with innovation and contribute to the understanding of partnerships between STIs and companies.