Developing National Systems of Innovation (original) (raw)

2015, Developing National Systems of Innovation

Economic development in countries behind the technological frontier requires innovation both by firms, and by farms, hospitals, and other organizations that provide goods and services. This is not innovation in the sense of introducing something new to the world economy, but of introducing something new to the particular context. In general, in economies that are significantly behind the frontier and that are aiming to catch up, the new practices put in place by firms tend to be modelled on practices that have been employed for some time by firms at the frontier. However, empirical research shows clearly that innovation of this kind has many of the attributes of innovation at the frontier. A large share of these efforts fails. Success generally requires a considerable amount of learning by the firms by doing and using before they acquire the needed capabilities. This view of the process through which developing economies acquire increased capabilities to produce goods and services is relatively new among economists who study the process. Traditionally, economists have focused on the investments needed. They saw the problem of mastering new ways of doing things as mostly involving "technology transfer", a term that played down the difficult learning processes involved. In the early writings of development economists on the need for firm learning, the focus was on what the firms themselves needed to do. More recently, there has been growing recognition that firms are part of a community of organizations and institutions whose interactions affect the direction and efficacy of learning. The concept of an "innovation system," which for some time has been employed by scholars of innovation in advanced industrial countries, is now more often used to denote and characterize the complex collection of actors and interactions that are involved in innovation in countries behind the frontiers and striving to catch up. The research projects in this book focus on a particular part of the workings of innovation systems: the interactions between universities and public laboratories and firms, and how these interactions affect the efficacy of the efforts of firms to acquire new capabilities. In recent years, the relationships between universities and firms, and how these relationships x Developing national systems of innovation xi Acknowledgements We would like to thank Professor Richard Nelson and his Catch Up Project for the tremendous incentive and help provided for this research. Our international research is a child of the Catch Up Project. Launched at Columbia University in May 2005, the Catch Up Project provided the first opportunity for researchers from 12 countries and three continents to make contact and exchange information about a potential research project. In September 2006 in Milan, the Catch Up Project held a meeting hosted by Franco Malerba to improve the project proposal for presentation to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Professor Richard Nelson always helped our theoretical and empirical discussions, and generously used his knowledge to improve our proposals. We would like to thank IDRC and its Research on Knowledge Systems (RoKS) Program for funding our research in three continents and 12 countries. The guidance, help, and enthusiasm provided by Jean Woo, since the RoKS Workshop in Ho Chi Minh City in January 2007 and during all phases of our research, were very important for our work. In addition, the Globelics network provided opportunities for our groups to come together in South Africa, Mexico, and Argentina to both organize our research and present preliminary results. Funding from IDRC helped attract other funding sources in many countries. We would like to thank the Mexican agency Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), the Argentine agencies Consejo