The paper discusses the role of cooperation between universities and firms in the innovative performance of a sample of Brazilian industrial firms. The focus is on both process and product innovation. Using data from the World Bank Investment Climate (Brazil, 2003) it is shown that cooperation with universities does positively increase the probability that an industrial firm successfully innovates. It is argued that the evidence is favorable to the idea that in countries where the National System of Innovation is still immature cooperation between firms and universities is an important mechanism for fostering both product and process innovation.