Abstract not found

While the course of technological change is widely accepted to be highly uncertain and unpredictable, little work has identified or studied the ultimate sources and causes of that uncertainty. This paper proposes that purely technological uncertainty derives from inventors ’ search processes with unfamiliar components and component combinations. Experimentation with new components and new combinations leads to less useful inventions on average, but it also implies an increase in the variability that can result in both failure and breakthrough. Negative binomial count and dispersion models with patent citation data demonstrate that new combinations are indeed more variable. In contrast to predictions, however, the reuse of components has a nonmonotonic and eventually positive effect on variability.

Abstract: Based on experiences from participatory foresight exercises and a recent foresight study for the Finnish food and drink industries, we elaborate three overarching objectives for foresight activities, i.e. improved systems understanding enhanced networking strengthened innovation activities. We also argue that foresight is an inherently creative (and hence uncertain) activity where success depends on how adequately combinations of analytical and communicative methods are adopted in relation to possibly evolving foresight objectives. Specifically, we postulate that responsiveness to shifting stakeholder interests and expectations may be required in the definition and pursuit of foresight objectives; this, in turn, has implications for decision-making structures and methodological choices. Some of these implications are highlighted by describing a foresight study for the Finnish food and drink industries.

In this introduction the editors showcase the papers by way of a structured project and seek to clarify the two key concepts cited in the title. We consider the history of the idea that knowledge is an economic factor, and discuss the question of whether regions provide the relevant system of reference for knowledge-based economic development. Current transformations in university-industry-government relations at various levels can be considered as a metamorphosis in industry organization. The concept of constructed advantage will be elaborated. The various papers arising from a conference on this subject hosted by Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada are approached from this perspective. JEL Classification; A14, O33, R11, R58

this paper subsumes all discussion found in an earlier working paper entitled "Providing Access to More than Access: Services in the Commercial Internet Access Market." All errors are mine.

Schumpeter's (1939) distinction between changes in the form of the production function corresponding to innovation, and shifts along the production function corresponding to factor substitution, does not preclude that the underlying dynamics interact. In an evolutionarily complex system, such interactions are expected: they lead to non-linear terms in the model, and therefore to stabilization and self-organization in addition to selection and variation. Relatively simple simulations enable us to specify various concepts used in "evolutionary economics" in terms of non- linear dynamics. While a technological trajectory can be considered as a stabilization in a (distributed) environment, a technological regime can be defined as a next-higher-order globalization in a hyper-space. A regime is able to restore its order despite local disturbances, for example by the political system. Technology policies may be effective at the level of the (sub-)systems if they provide the relevant agents with room for "creative destruction" of the globalized hyper-systems.

Drawing upon a framework of analysis developed by Thomas Hughes, this paper examines the development of the telecommunications network as a large technical system, dealing with the ways in which innovation is behind the rate and direction of system growth. It focuses on developments in the USA and in Europe since the 1960s in a period when a cluster of radical innovations changed the traditional technical and institutional set-up of the telephone network. The paper argues that an explanation of innovation in large technical systems'has to account for the economic drive to realize economies of scale and. scope. However, a new concept of economy of system is required to explain the reductions in cost which stem from innovations that improve the control of traffic, or load, through the telecommunications network and other large technical systems. The argument of the paper is not that economic forces take priority over issues of social and political choice but, rather, that a framework is required which accounts far the ways in which technology and economics mix with politics in the development of telecommunications and other large systems. I

Can the knowledge base of an economy be measured? In this study, we combine the perspective of regional economics on the interrelationships among technology, organization, and territory with the triple-helix model, and offer the mutual information in three dimensions as an indicator of the configuration. When this probabilistic entropy is negative, the configuration reduces the uncertainty that prevails at the systems level. Data about more than a million Dutch companies are used for testing the indicator. The data contain postal codes (geography), sector codes (proxy for technology), and firm sizes in terms of number of employees (proxy for organization). The configurations are mapped at three levels: national (NUTS-1), provincial (NUTS-2), and regional (NUTS-3). The levels are cross-tabled with the knowledge-intensive sectors and services. The results suggest that medium-tech sectors contribute to the knowledge base of an economy more than high-tech ones. Knowledgeintensive services have an uncoupling effect, but less so at the high-tech end of these services.

The importance of tacit knowledge in organisational learning and innovation has become the focus of considerable attention in the recent literature. Our understanding of the nature of the links between tacit knowledge and organisational learning, however, has been hampered by the lack of a conceptual framework integrating micro-level learning activities with organisational forms and macro-level societal institutions. This paper seeks to achieve such an integrative task. It argues that there is an interactive relationship between dominant knowledge types and organisational forms. Further, the extent to which tacit knowledge constitutes the knowledge base of the firm, and how it is formed and used are powerfully shaped by the broader institutional context. The paper develops a four-fold typology, at the cognitive, organisational and societal levels, as an analytical framework to explain the links between knowledge types, organisational forms and societal institutions. It shows how the three levels interact to shape the learning and innovative capabilities of firms. The theory developed in this paper represents the first attempt to integrate the diverse strands of literature and different levels of analysis into a single coherent framework.

There are two lines of agency visibly at work shaping the habits of thought of [a] people in the complex movements of readjustment and rehabilitation [required by industrialization]. These are the received scheme of use and wont and the new state of the industrial arts; and it is not difficult to see that it is the latter that makes for readjustment; nor should it be any more difficult to see that the readjustment is necessarily made under the surveillance of the received scheme of use and wont. Thorstein Veblen, 1915 The comparative productivity experience of nations is commonly viewed as a race. But there is a difference between a runners ’ race and a productivity race between nations. In a track race, if one runner gets off to a fast start, there is no reason why, on that account alone, her rivals should then be able to run faster than she. A productivity race is different: under certain conditions, being behind gives a productivity laggard the ability to grow faster than the early leader. That is the main contention of the "convergence hypothesis. " The most striking example of the convergence to which this hypothesis refers was the experience since World War II, when America’s large lead eroded and the productivity levels of the other technologically advanced