Technological Change

252 Pages·2012·4.504 MB·English

by  A. Texiera

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

Edited by Aurora A.C. Teixeira
Technological Change
Edited by Aurora A.C. Teixeira

Published by InTech
Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia

Copyright © 2012 InTech
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First published April, 2012
Printed in Croatia

A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com
Additional hard copies can be obtained from [email protected]

Technological Change, Edited by Aurora A.C. Teixeira
p. cm.
ISBN 978-953-51-0509-1

Contents

Preface IX
Part 1 Conceptualizing Technological Change 1
Chapter 1 Technological Change and Economic Transformation 3
Musa Jega Ibrahim
Chapter 2 The Social Consequences of
Technological Change in Capitalist Societies 25
Tony Smith
Chapter 3 Intellectual Property Rights
and Endogenous Economic Growth –
Uncovering the Main Gaps in the Research Agenda 45
Mónica L. Azevedo, Sandra T. Silva and Óscar Afonso
Chapter 4 Reconciling Orthodox
and Heterodox Approaches to
Economic Growth – A Modeling Proposal 65
Aurora A.C. Teixeira
Part 2 Measuring Technological Change 87
Chapter 5 Measuring Technological Change –
Concept, Methods, and Implications 89
Byoung Soo Kim
Chapter 6 Quantitative Technology Forecasting Techniques 103
Steven R. Walk
Part 3 The Empirics of Technological Change 125
Chapter 7 Trade, SBTC and Skill Premia –
A Cross-Country and Cross-Gender Analysis 127
Oscar Afonso, Alexandre Almeida
and Cristina Santos
VI Contents

Chapter 8 Internationalization Approaches
of the Automotive Innovation
System – A Historical Perspective 141
António C. Moreira and Ana Carolina Carvalho
Chapter 9 Towards the European Union – Impact of FDI
and Technological Change on Turkish Banking 173
Özlem Olgu
Chapter 10 The Impact of ICTs on Innovative
Sustainable Development in East and Southern Africa 197
Gabriel Kabanda
Chapter 11 Knowledge Frontiers for Sustainable
Growth and Development in Zimbabwe 219
Gabriel Kabanda

Preface

“Technological change is an important, if not the most important, factor responsible for
economic growth …” (Mansfield, 1971: 1-2)
Technological change is today central to the theory of economic growth (Teixeira and
Fortuna, 2010). It is recognized as an important driver of productivity growth and the
emergence of new products from which consumers derive welfare (Verspagen, 2010).
Technological change depends not only on the work of scientists and engineers, but
also on a wider range of economic and societal factors, including institutions such as
intellectual property rights and corporate governance, the operation of markets, a
range of governmental policies (science and technology policy, innovation policy,
macroeconomic policy,competition policy, etc.), historical specificities, etc. (Teixeira
and Lopes, 2012).
In a classical work (Schmookler, 1966: 1), technology is defined as a “social pool of
knowledge of the industrial arts” and technological change as alterations in that
knowledge stock. However, the concept of ‘technology’ has had narrower or broader
meanings, ranging from the technical information contained in only one patent to a
more generic form covering the artefact dimension of a machine and the technical
know-how of human beings (engineers, managers, machine operators, etc.). Broader
meanings also include the institutions that enable the use of technical knowledge
(including companies and the manner in which they are organized), and the socio-
political and legal contexts that influence the direction and rate of knowledge transfer
and associated artefacts.
Thus, depending on the context and definition, technological change may be related
not only with changes in the knowledge which, in principle, all potential users may
easily access, but also with the experience associated with labour, the learning process
of individuals and developments in the machines with which they work (Hall, 1994). It
may also apply to organizational and sociocultural changes. When these changes
imply some degree of improvement in terms of a given criterion, we talk of
technological progress or advancement.
Technical or technological change demands innovation (Fagerber, 2005).Like
‘technology’, innovation also has narrower and broader meanings. The global process
of innovation implies a set of activities that contribute to the production of new goods
X Preface

and services or to production involving completely new forms/methods (Schumpeter,
1934). In a narrower sense, innovation occurs when a new good, service or method of
production is commercialized for the first time, usually meaning the first in a given
economy, but also meaning at times the first time for a given company or the first time
at world level (Tidd and Bessant, 2009). When a given product is produced by means
of a new method, process innovation takes place; when the product is changed or a
new product is introduced, it is product innovation that has occurred. It should be
noted that some product innovations are also process innovations (Steil et al., 2002).
Generally speaking, the term ‘Economics of Innovation’ (Freeman, 1990) is usually
associated to the evolutionary school of thought and ‘Economics of Technological
Change’ (Mansfield and Mansfield, 1993) to the neoclassical school. Although this
‘divide’ in nomenclatures and schools is evident in the works The Economics of
Innovation and The Economics of Technical Change edited, respectively by Chris Freeman
and Edwin and Elizabeth Mansfield, a not insignificant number of authors in the area
do not distinguish between them (at least, not explicitly). In the work edited by
Freeman (1990), the main topics focused on are ‘Innovation and evolutionary models
of economic growth and development’, ‘Sources and effects of innovation’, ‘Innovative
strategies of companies’, ‘The selective context innovative companies have to face’,
and ‘Patterns of innovation, cycles and paradigms’. In the work of Mansfield and
Mansfield (2003), though, the main topics are: ‘Technological change and economic
growth’, ‘Social and private returns of Research and Development’, ‘Market structure
and technological change’, ‘Intellectual property rights’, ‘Dissemination of
innovations’, ‘International transfer of technology’, and ‘Technology management’.
The focus on interdisciplinarity which characterizes much of the work on
technological change and the economics of innovation reflects the fact that no single
area is able to cover all the aspects of technological innovation/change. Thus, so as to
obtain an overarching perspective, there is a need to combine contribution from
several areas. Economics, for example, has traditionally worked on the allocation of
resources to innovation activities (in competition with other purposes) and the
corresponding economic impact, where the process of innovation has been more or
less handled as a “black box” (Rosenberg, 1982). What happens in that “box” has been
left to other domains. Much of what takes place in the area of innovation naturally has
to do with learning, a key topic in the science of cognition. Such learning occurs in
organized environments, for example, groups, teams, companies and networks, whose
operation is studied in domains like sociology, science of organizations, management,
and business studies. Furthermore, as highlighted by the economic geographers,
learning processes tend to be related to specific contexts and locations. The manner in
which innovation is organized and its location has also suffered major transformations
over time, as has been pointed out in studies in the area of economic history.
The economics of technological innovation/change thus invaded the territory that had
already been divided among Industrial Economics, Theory of the Firm, and Regional
Economics, without neglecting important aspects from International Economics and