Polynomial innovation diffusion models

In an earlier paper [42] the authors presented a comprehensive evaluation and extensions of available causal models of “binomial type” for describing the time pattern of the innovation diffusion processes. The binomial models are based on the assumption that the entire population can be divided into two groups—adopters of an innovation and the potential adopters—such that eventually everyone adopts the innovation and an innovation once adopted is never rejected. However, many examples can be cited where this assumption is unrealistic. Therefore this paper presents some polynomial innovation diffusion models that are less restrictive compared with the binomial models. The paper also shows the link between the polynomial diffusion process and the multilevel technological substitution process.     

Will low technology products disappear?: The hidden innovation processes in low technology industries

Political discussions and analyses have usually been devoted to an understanding of the development of high technology products, although low technology products have dominated the industrial structure of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The important role of low technology products in these countries raises the question of whether we can observe a technological paradox in the industrial structure of the more advanced nations, the dominant role of this sector in spite of its competitive disadvantages because of high wages. Using the Danish packaging industry as an example, a central thesis in the article is that innovation processes are important in low technology industries. They are also often an integrated part of the marketing and production functions of the firm. The innovation processes in the low technology industries are therefore too complex for traditional R&D analyses to handle. The article points out that—especially in small firms—the “practical man” and his “tacit knowledge” play a very central role in both product and process development, and that low technology, even in the future, will play a central role in the industrial structure of the OECD countries.     

How firm capabilities affect who benefits from foreign technology

We explore how firm capabilities affect the diffusion of technology brought with foreign direct investment (FDI). Using a panel dataset on Indonesian manufacturers from 1988 to 1996, we measure how the productivity of differing domestic firms responds to the entry of multinational competitors. We find that firms with investments in research and development and firms with highly educated employees adopt more technology from foreign entrants than others. In contrast, firms that have a small “technology gap,” meaning that they are close to the international best-practice frontier, benefit less than firms with weak prior technical competency. This finding suggests that the marginal return to new knowledge is greater for firms that have more room to “catch up” than it is for already competitive firms.     

Leaders in change : Solar energy owners and the implications for future adoption rates

Information on the characteristics of the initial wave of homeowners who installed solar energy systems is presented and then used to anticipate future solar market penetration patterns. Surveys of these adopters reveal high education and income levels; professional and executive occupations; economic, energy saving, and environmental concern as the principal purchase motivations; and high satisfaction levels. As a group, these individuals conform to the “early adopter” type identified in innovation diffusion research rather than the “innovator” type that would be expected at this early stage of commercialization. This characteristic, the influence of economic motivations, owners' high satisfaction levels, and the findings of other surveys indicate that widespread solar system adoption is probable if the initial high cost barrier can be reduced.     

Afterword on the Five-Year Outlook: Problems and promises

The editors offer a synthesis that reflects the motivations and concerns that underlie this volume and present “some reasonably tempered hopes and future prospects”. Among the former, they discuss “political/ institutional issues” impinging on the Outlook—its purpose, production, users, and feedback—as well as “technical/intellectual” ones. Among the latter, they note that for Outlook reports beyond the second, current signals are that the science policy community will be involved more substantially, and that contributions in general will be decentralized. They foresee the Outlook evolving into a forum for discussion and advocacy of future science-technology priorities.     

Are environmental concerns drivers of innovation? Interpreting Portuguese innovation data to foster environmental foresight

The relationship between environmental concerns and innovation is analyzed in the context of Portuguese manufacturing firms, with the ultimate goal to foster measures of environmental foresight.Based on data from the Community Innovation Survey in Portugal, simple statistical tests, including Chi², t, and Levene's tests and contingency tables (adjusted standardized residuals), were used to study the relationship between firms' characteristics and the introduction of innovation aiming to reduce environmental damage. Environmental foresight is discussed based on three groups of variables that allow considering the industrial context that frames firm's actions, the economic performance of the firm and its innovation patterns.Results show that the development of innovation due to environmental concerns is positively associated with the firm's size and exports share, and negatively associated with its technological content. Moreover, it is shown that the firms that introduced innovations due to environmental concerns are likely to belong to an economic group, to have performed continuous R&D, or received public support. It is also shown that “lack of organizational flexibility” and “lack of receptivity by customers” are the two most relevant innovation barriers for these firms.     

中国环境规制、技术创新与碳排放量关系的动态分析——基于脉冲响应函数和方差分解法

作为最大的发展中国家,我国面临着经济发展和节能减排的双重困扰,低碳经济模式成为实现可持续发展的重要途径。以1994—2009年中国环境规制、技术创新与碳排放量数据为依据,利用脉冲响应函数与方差分解法对环境规制、技术创新与碳排放量在外部因素冲击下的动态响应态势进行测算,结果表明:在10年的响应期下,环境规制强度与碳排放量之间在对方冲击下的响应曲线呈N型,技术创新能力与碳排放量之间的相互响应曲线为N型和倒U型;环境规制强度与技术创新能力之间的相互响应曲线都为N型。     

Coping with Technology Divergence Policies and Strategies for India’s Industrial Development

Recent studies on innovation have demonstrated the relationship between technology and growth. However, as most of them are centered on the experience of the highly industrialized nations, a different approach to technology policy must be taken. As late industrializers, developing countries lag in adopting foreign technologies. Institutional factors and economic policy also influence the diffusion process. With decentralized decision making, the coexistence of diverse technologies in a given industrial branch is inevitable. Consequently, social costs tend to be high because of duplication of efforts, reduced learning opportunities, and adoption of inefficient technologies. This article examines the coexistence of diverse technologies leading to technology fragmentation in India’s steel industry. Recent innovative behavior in the Japanese and Korean steel industry indicates that the effects of fragmentation can be contained through a policy of “system integration.” This is an institutional process by which industry-specific applications of scientific knowledge are fused with basic research itself. This demands a forward-looking policy that rejuvenates older industries, such as steel, in socially acceptable ways and organically creates new knowledge for national development and social welfare.     

A model of “coupled” technology transfer : A logistic curve approach

This article presents a mathematical model relating to the technology transfer problem. The origin of the problem stems from the existing trade-offs between the strategies of “technological progressiveness” and “static efficiency” employed by firms or countries defined as “leaders” and “followers,” respectively. The formulation of the model is based on the assumption that the technological development of a firm or a country follows a logistic growth curve when related to a specific technology. During the process of a “coupled” technology transfer, the development of the follower changes and its behavior is described by a first order nonhomogenous deferential equation. Different scenarios of the “coupled” technology transfer between the leader and the follower are being discussed.     

Does uncertainty justify intensity emission caps?

Environmental policies often set “relative” or “intensity” emission caps, i.e. emission limits proportional to the polluting firm's output. One of the arguments put forth in favour of relative caps is based on the uncertainty on business-as-usual output: if the firm's production level is higher than expected, so will be business-as-usual emissions, hence reaching a given level of emissions will be more costly than expected. As a consequence, it is argued, a higher emission level should be allowed if the production level is more important than expected. We assess this argument with a stochastic analytical model featuring two random variables: the business-as-usual emission level, proportional to output, and the slope of the marginal abatement cost curve. We compare the relative cap to an absolute cap and to a price instrument, in terms of welfare impact. It turns out that in most plausible cases, either a price instrument or an absolute cap yields a higher expected welfare than a relative cap. Quantitatively, the difference in expected welfare is typically very small between the absolute and the relative cap but may be significant between the relative cap and the price instrument.     

Constant per capita consumption paths with exhaustible resources and decaying produced capital

We introduce decay in produced capital and exogenous technical progress to the recent “Solow Model” of Asheim et al. with population growth and observe the possible collapse of the economy given too high a rate of decay. “Enough” technical progress can restore sustainable per capita consumption.     

Technology adoption and LDC firms

In a duopoly framework we show that among the set of firms competing with the technology leader, both relatively advanced and relatively backward firms will not be likely adopters of the superior technology. Instead, the firms in the “middle” will invest for adopting the superior technology. This particularly characterizes the innovation characteristic of LDC markets where backward firms exist along with technology super-powers.     

Is error learning behaviour stabilizing?

It is very commonly admitted that error-learning behaviour in general improves the stability of dynamical economic evolutions. We show here, in the context of Temporary General Equilibrium Theory, that such an intuition is not true, in the sense that “most often,” for a large class of models, learning does not assuredly leads to more stable dynamics. The presentation of the problem then allows for a discussion of the type of hypothesis—very high levels of information or very careful behaviours—which can invalidate such a conclusion.     

A Primer on Logistic Growth and Substitution: The Mathematics of the Loglet Lab Software

This article describes the mathematics underlying the Loglet Lab software package for loglet analysis. “Loglet analysis” refers to the decomposition of growth and diffusion into S-shaped logistic components, roughly analogous to wavelet analysis, popular for signal processing and compression. The term “loglet” joins “logistic” and “wavelet.” Loglet analysis comprises two models: the first is the component logistic model, in which autonomous systems exhibit logistic growth. The second is the logistic substitution model, which models the effects of competitions within a market. An appendix describes the current status of the software.     

Policy implications of potential conflicts between short-term and long-term efficiency in CO2 emissions abatement

This paper shows that, under certain conditions (including path dependence and lock-in), policies and measures leading to a cost-effective GHG emissions mitigation in the short term may not allow reaching long-term emissions targets at the lowest possible cost, that is, they might not be cost-effective in the long term. The reason is that, in a situation where currently expensive technologies have a large potential for cost reductions through learning effects and R&D investments, the implementation of incentive-based mitigation policies such as taxes or tradable permits will encourage the adoption and diffusion of currently low-cost abatement technologies, but might not be enough to make attractive the diffusion of expensive ones, which is a necessary condition for these technologies to realise their cost-reduction potential through the aforementioned effects. A simple model and a numerical simulation are provided to show this possible conflict between static and dynamic efficiency, which points out to the need to combine different instruments, some aiming at short-term cost-efficiency (such as incentive-based environmental policy) and others at encouraging dynamic cost reductions (such as technology/innovation policy).     

R&D cluster quality measures and technology maturity

“Innovation indicators” strive to track the maturation of an emerging technology to help forecast its prospective development. One rich source of information is the changing content of discourse of R&D, as the technology progresses. We analyze the content of research paper abstracts obtained by searching large databases on a given topic. We then map the evolution of that topic's emphasis areas.The present research seeks to validate a process that creates factors (clusters) based on term usage in technical papers. Three composite quality measures—cohesion, entropy, and F measure—are computed. Using these measures, we create standard factor groupings that optimize the composite term sets and facilitate comparisons of the R&D emphasis areas (i.e., clusters) over time.The conceptual foundation for this approach lies in the presumption that domain knowledge expands and becomes more application specific in nature as a technology matures. We hypothesize implications for this knowledge expansion in terms of the three factor measures, then observe these empirically for the case of a particular technology—autonomous navigation. These metrics can provide indicators of technological maturation.     

QTIP: Quick technology intelligence processes

Empirical technology analyses need not take months; they can be done in minutes. One can thereby take advantage of wide availability of rich science and technology publication and patent abstract databases to better inform technology management. To do so requires developing templates of innovation indicators to answer standard questions. Then, one can automate routines to generate composite information representations (“one-pagers”) that address the issues at hand, the way that the target users want.     

Can Japan succeed in “Chigyo-ka” (intelprise-formation)?

There are two aspects in today's information revolution that started in the late 1970s. The first is an aspect referred to as “the third industrial revolution,” which triggers the transition to the “21st century system of Industrialization.” The information revolution in this sense brings the creation of new “breakthrough industries (new multimedia industries).” And the second aspect of the information revolution possesses the characteristics of both a technological revolution and a social revolution and brings about the arrival of the third phase of the historical evolutionary process of the modern civilization, which proceeds through three phases, namely “militarization, industrialization, and then informatization.”If the bearers of modern industrialization are a “group of enterprises” that have been engaged in the race in order to gain “wealth” (generalized means of exchange/exploitation power), and if these enterprises' activities have been exercised in the world market where their products have been sold, then it is appropriate to call the bearers of informatization a “group of intelprises.” They will be engaged in the race to gain “wisdom” (generalized means of persuasion/induction power), then stages of their activities can be called a “global intelplace” where “sharables,” that is, information and knowledge, will be disseminated. And now, toward the 21st century, the third phase of modernization, which can be called the “informatization/intelprise formation” or the “wisdom game” (intellectualism), is about to begin.Japan's “ie society (a society based on the ie principle—literally, it means “house” but here it is interpreted as cultural principle for organizing a society), which has been going through the process of evolution on the Japan Archipelago, has developed a network-based organization with little stratification within its infrastructure. In this sense, Japanese society can be characterized as a “network-oriented society” in which intelprises and an intelplace in the broad sense have functioned as the essential components of the society since Middle Ages. In general, an intelplace and intelprises that operate actively within this framework serve as the flexible bases for different types of social relations and institutions, such as states and markets and eventually integrate these into the society to a certain extent. In fact, it took place quite regularly during the modernization “in the narrow sense,” or Westernization of Japanese society after the Meiji Restoration. There exist some problems, however. Some of the characteristics found in Japanese society may become obstacles to activities aimed at the sharing and promotion of information and knowledge in the global intelplace and Japanese participation in the “wisdom game.” Badly needed are serious efforts for Japanese intelprise-formation to reduce these obstacles as much as possible.     

New information technology in India: The electronics riddle

The paper provides a critical assessment of India's electronics policy from its very inception to the present time. It is argued that despite its narrow scope and many shortcomings, the Indian government's new electronics policy based on the principle of liberalization is a step in the right direction. A much wider and speedier development of advanced electronics technology and its application in critical areas—e.g., transport and communication systems—is recommended for India and other similarly situated “non-electronic” developing countries. The implication of missing the electronics revolution by these countries would be their continuing dependence and backwardness.     

Green consumers and public policy: On socially contingent moral motivation

“Green” consumers appear to accept individual responsibility for the provision of public goods. The propensity to take such responsibility may depend on beliefs about others’ behavior, even for consumers motivated by internalized moral norms, not by social sanctions. This effect can produce multiple equilibria with either high or low demand for “green” products. Permanent increases in green consumption may be achieved by imposing temporary taxes or subsidies, or through advertising that influences beliefs about others’ behavior or about external effects. If a tax is interpreted as taking responsibility away from the individual, however, taxes can reduce the influence of moral motivation.