Technology, Innovation and Industrial Economics: Institutional Perspectives, inspired by the work of William E. Cole, Professor Emeritus at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, extends his work with essays on technology, innovation and industrial economics from an Institutionalist perspective. The managerial style, innovational practices and industrial setting of the continuous improvement firm are central to several chapters. This volume also features innovation and technology in Latin America, Adam Smith's writing on entrepreneurship and a comparison of American and European Institutionalism. The topics of technology, innovation, industrial organization and industrial policy are being widely discussed and debated in today's literature, but seldom from an Institutionalist perspective. The purpose of this book is to reduce substantially this missing dimension in the ongoing debates on these important issues.

In this volume a group of distinguished scholars take up the familiar Schumpeterian theme of innovation. They cast it in a new light by emphasizing not technology and innovation in particular industries but rather innovation in institutions and organizational structures. They thus cumulatively argue that innovation promotes not only industry but the evolution of society as a whole.

The determinants of a firm's innovative capacity are rooted in organizational design, incentives, human resources, internal culture, and external linkages. Profiting from innovation is always a challenge and licensing is one of many options.

Regional technology-based economic development and the recruitment and retention of talent is a top priority of city-regions in the United States and in countries around the world. However, policy recommendations from government officials, industry leaders and academics are often ambiguous or are in conflict. To address these issues, this book deals with the complex intersection of institutional theory and national and regional policy initiatives. It provides an overview of United States and Japanese technology policy development at the national level with case analyses of Austin, Texas and Tsuruoka, Japan to identify key regional strategies and processes that have resulted in successful endogenous technology-based business development and job creation. It offers an innovative analytical perspective to improve our understanding of how successful tech-based regional economic development works in theory and practice. The book’s discussion is grounded on important technology paradigm shifts in the US and Japan from 1970 to 1980 leading to current realities. To address the complex “Puzzle of Space” conundrum, the authors describe similarities and differences in regional development processes in Austin and Tsuruoka. They present a generalizable model indicating necessary and sufficient conditions linked to the building of new “Small i” institutions at normative and cognitive levels of analysis in consort with regulative policy and innovations at macro level “Capital I” institutions. The book clearly explains the relations between institutions and economic growth, an important issue in contemporary economics. The book’s conclusions clarify critical success factors for endogenous regional development growth theory and lead to recommendations for policymakers who are searching for ways to achieve success.

Technology, Growth, and Development uniquely presents the complexities of technical and institutional change on the foundation of modern growth theory. The author shows how the rates and directions of technical change are induced by changes in competitive funding and institutional innovations in the modern research university and industrial laboratory. In turn, technical change itself becomes a powerful source of institutional change. Organized by the author in four parts, the first-Productivity and Economic Growth-gives specific reasons for the slowing of productivity growth in the United States and other leading industrial countries during the last quarter of the twentieth century. In Part II-Sources of Technical Change-the author examines a host of economic factors that influence invention and innovation; the rate and direction of institutional change; and the adoption, diffusion, and transfer of technology. In Part III-Technical Innovation and Industrial Change-he traces the sources and impact of technical change in five strategically important industries: agriculture, electric power, chemical, computer, and biotechnology. The final section, Part IV-Technology Policy-evaluates the role of technical change in international competition, the role of science and technology in environmental policy, and the evolution of U.S. science and technology policy. Technology, Growth, and Development makes few mathematical demands on students, and will be used in courses within economics departments as well as management and public affairs. In addition, it will be required reading for professional economists, managers, and policy analysts at all levels.

The idea behind this book is that institutions are important when it comes to explaining the specialisation and performance of national innovation systems. The idea is not new. But largely the institution-concept has remained somewhat vague and unspecified in the literature. This book is valuable since it succeeds in opening up the black box of institutions and organisations. The distinction between institutions at different levels and how they link up and form a systemic whole is especially original and fruitful. The interdisciplinary team behind the book has also produced a welcome antidote to the current tendency to benchmark innovation systems exclusively on the basis of quantitative indicators. The analysis demonstrates that some national systems do better in some specific areas because of being supported by institutions that are sometimes deeply rooted in history and culture. This is why imitating best-practice across countries is not a straight forward thing to do. Bengt-Åke Lundvall, Aalborg University, Denmark Innovation and Institutions is an extensive elaboration on the make up of systems of innovation. It examines why some countries are more innovative than others, why national styles of innovation differ, and goes on to explore why some countries make radical innovations but fail to successfully market them, whilst others making incremental innovations have more commercial success. The book draws on a variety of different literatures and perspectives to illustrate the organizational and institutional dimensions of national innovation systems. Literatures discussed include the economics of innovation, organizational sociology, administrative science, institutional economics, organizational learning, network analysis, business systems, economic governance and regulation. This truly interdisciplinary book will be invaluable to academics and researchers focussing on innovation in a wide range of fields. It will also strongly appeal to practitioners and policymakers concerned with innovation.

The past two decades have seen a gradual but noticeable change in the economic organization of innovative activity. Most firms used to integrate research and development with activities such as production, marketing, and distribution. Today firms are forming joint ventures, research and development alliances, licensing deals, and a variety of other outsourcing arrangements with universities, technology-based start-ups, and other established firms. In many industries, a division of innovative labor is emerging, with a substantial increase in the licensing of existing and prospective technologies. In short, technology and knowledge are becoming definable and tradable commodities. Although researchers have made significant advances in understanding the determinants and consequences of innovation, until recently they have paid little attention to how innovation functions as an economic process. This book examines the nature and workings of markets for intermediate technological inputs. It looks first at how industry structure, the nature of knowledge, and intellectual property rights facilitate the development of technology markets. It then examines the impacts of these markets on firm boundaries, the division of labor within the economy, industry structure, and economic growth. Finally, it examines the implications of this framework for public policy and corporate strategy. Combining theoretical perspectives from economics and management with empirical analysis, the book also draws on historical evidence and case studies to flesh out its research results.