Brazil could emerge as one of the world's leading scientific powers by 2025, if it pursues a policy of intelligent investment and maximises the benefits of international collaboration.

Brazilian technology has thus far developed a small number of world-class centres of excellence. In the next 20 years, overall domestic technological contributions to the national economy could expand, given the right conditions.

While existing science and technology centres continue to thrive, new regional innovation clusters are likely to develop in the emerging science powerhouses of China, India, and Brazil to maximise knowledge networks and economies of scale.

The 20th-century phenomenon of 'brain drain', of scientific and engineering talent emigrating from developing countries to North America and Europe, is likely to be replaced by 'brain circulation', in which globally mobile scientists and engineers work for shorter periods in a wider range of countries.

The 'science city', and the underlying model of state management and direction of science that it often implied, will probably become obsolete in the next 20 years, displaced by the new phenomenon of the science park.

Over the next 50 years, the long US dominance of a wide range of fields in science and technology is likely to end as the global scientific playing field becomes flatter and more diverse.

China could emerge as a scientific and technical superpower in the next 20 years if it improves its management of intellectual property and finance, further liberalises its markets, and relaxes political constraints.

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