Marshaling Technology for Development Proceedings of a Symposium (1995) / Chapter Skim
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What We Know and Do Not Know about Technology Transfer: Linking Knowledge to Action
What We Know and Do Not Know about Technology Transfer: Linking Knowledge to Action
Pages 83-96
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From page 83... ...
Too many politicians and managers in developing countries view technology as a package that can be bought "off the shelf" and become immediately useful. But rightly conceived, technology transfer is a process of cumulative learning, in the same sense that research and development (R&D)
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From page 84... ...
Thus Richard Nelson defines innovation as "the processes by which firms master and get into practice product designs and manufacturing processes that are new to them, whether or not they are new to the universe, or even to the nation." Furthermore, he defines technology not only as "specific designs and practices" but also as "generic understanding .
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From page 85... ...
Indeed, about 65 percent of all professional scientists and engineers in the national work force in a typical industrialized country are not engaged in R&D at all but in a broad spectrum of downstream activities. Much of the technical activity from which "economic rents" may be derived resides not in the R&D but in these downstream activities, and this becomes increasingly so as technology becomes more "science based." But because of the way in which statistics on technical activity in the United States have been collected, much more is known about the nature, quality, and content of R&D than about the quality and valueadded of the downstream technical activities.
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From page 86... ...
One of the major trends in the developed countries over the last 30 years has been the increased importance over time of the sources of technical information and ideas that originate outside firms, including the growth of institutional alliances and "innovation networks," frequently crossing national boundaries. Many of these structures are ad hoc and temporary, formed for particular innovations or production plants.
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From page 87... ...
The kind of exchange described in item 10 is often not strongly opposed by management because there is an implicit expectation of future reciprocity that makes the joint gains from such cooperation exceed the possible competitive losses in the long run.7 In short, as product design and production technology have become increasingly science-based, know-how has tended to diffuse more and more rapidly throughout the world technical community. As a result, the competitive advantage from which economic rents can be derived depends more on the downstream details of implementation and less on the novelty and originality of the basic technical idea or generic design.
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From page 88... ...
But such novel efforts also are open to greater competition since the new paradigm tends to erode the competitive advantage derived from cumulative experience with older paradigms and thereby narrows the window of opportunity for competitive success in incremental innovation. This is an important consideration for developing countries because it implies that the work force must experience continual cumulative learning, both from experience and from formal training, in order to remain competitive in a world market where intense, continual, incremental improvement is increasingly essential to sustained competitiveness.
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From page 89... ...
Both the computer and the transistor were seen as radical innovations, but initially both were perceived as merely radically improved substitutes for existing technologies- the transistor for the vacuum tube and the computer for the mechanical calculator or tabulating machine. The new technoeconomic paradigm was recognized only gradually as numerous other innovations in materials, solid-state devices, mathematical programming and higherlevel computer languages, information theory, and signal processing, among others, emerged at first more or less separately and then merged and became much more widely diffused.
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From page 90... ...
A second subcategorization that applies mainly to incremental and radical innovations distinguishes between innovations for which a single patent or group of patents or trade secrets held by a single owner or inventor provides a relatively unassailable proprietary position ("simple" technologies) , and innovations whose practical realization depends on a series of interdependent patents or trade secrets not controlled by any single company or organizational entity, thereby requiring extensive cross-licensing or alliances ("complex" technologies)
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From page 91... ...
In this kind of competition, timing is critical. Advantage accrues to wellprepared developing countries at a phase in the technology life cycle when demand is expanding rapidly (including the demand for ancillary and supporting technologies, which are the essential components of an emerging technological system)
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From page 92... ...
And when the linear sequence does occur, it is, at the beginning at least, unanticipated. But more important, the model overlooks the two-way or iterative interaction that occurs between the successive stages of technology development, which is significant even in the case of radical innovations that otherwise conform to the linear model more closely than the other types of innovations listed earlier.
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From page 93... ...
patterns is believed to stem in part from the much better job the Japanese do in documenting and codifying their previous model development experiences so that much more experience is transferred from one model development to the next. Similar comparisons have been constructed by Xerox for comparing the Japanese and U.S.
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From page 94... ...
process that is fundamental to the Japanese system. The separation between the various stages of the production system generally tends to be a more difficult problem in developing countries than in industrialized countries, in part because of the education gap in developing countries between the engineers and the rest of the work force and often because of a cultural tradition in which "hands-on" work has lower social status than intellectual work, making the integration of the stages of production more problematic.
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From page 95... ...
The generalizations about tight coupling between successive stages in the innovation process and about the importance of awareness of changes in technology and market conditions in the competitive environment are robust when stated at that level of generality, but what this coupling and this awareness actually entail in terms of the actions of managers and workers and technical experts in particular circumstances is far from self-evident. In any given case history, it is often difficult to distinguish between what is idiosyncratic to that particular case and what can be generalized to other similar cases or even what factors are most salient in defining what is meant by "similarity." This is really a part of the unfinished business of innovation research implied in the subtitle of this paper, "Linking Knowledge to Action." NOTES 1.
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From page 96... ...
. See especially chapter by Harvey Brooks, as well as summary observations by Brooks.
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