The purpose of this article is to discuss die links between technological backwardness and the advanced industrialised countries. In the current acceleration of technical change, the content of work tends to be enlarged, to incorporate an innovative componet. Such re-valuation of the intelligence of work is an important source for firm's innovative capability. However, in Brazil, industrialisation has been characterised by a low degree of development of technological fragility reinforces (and is reinforced by) the dominance of taylorism principles in the organisation of work, and the use of a workforce which is, generally, little skilled, badly paid and subject to high turnover.
