Infrastructural change and secular economic development

Long-term economic development is determined by changes to the infrastructure, especially material and non-material infrastructural networks that link agents in different locations. The infrastructure consists of the slowly changing, collective arena that supports production, exchange, and consumption, such as the built environment, transport networks, and institutions. In the short run the infrastructure can be regarded as fixed. Changes to the infrastructure are under normal conditions small enough to be disregarded by producers and consumers. With the creation of a critical link of a network, there will however be a revolutionary restructuring of the arena. Critical links are here defined as additions to infrastructural networks that create opportunities for new information and transport flows between previously unconnected regions. Such a revolutionary restructuring of infrastructural networks has been called a logistical revolution. Certain institutional pre-conditions are necessary for a logistical revolution, while the creation of a critical link is both a necessary and a sufficient condition. This paper discusses the three logistical revolutions that occurred in the 13th century, around 1600, and in the 19th century, which each had crucial similarities with the current “information revolution.”     

Innovation and the competitiveness of industries: Comparing the mainstream and the evolutionary approaches

The study of the relationships between innovation and the competitiveness of industries is an important topic for both, academic research and economic policy. The huge economics literature flourished in the last couple of decades on the subject broadly falls into two distinct research traditions, namely the mainstream R&D spillovers approach and the evolutionary economics view. Both traditions agree on the important role played by innovation and the inter-sectoral diffusion of advanced knowledge for the competitive performance of industrial sectors. Behind this general agreement, however, the two approaches are radically different. This paper shows that, at a deeper level of analysis, the mainstream and evolutionary views do indeed differ with respect to their theoretical foundations, empirical research and policy implications. In a nutshell, while the mainstream R&D spillover approach is inspired by a traditional view of economic policy based on a market-oriented approach, the evolutionary view is on the contrary consistent with the idea that institutional arrangements and policy interventions do indeed play a fundamental role for shaping innovation patterns and their impacts on the competitiveness of industries.     

Literature-related discovery (LRD): Lessons learned, and future research directions

Literature-related discovery (LRD) is the linking of two or more literature concepts that have heretofore not been linked (i.e., disjoint), in order to produce novel, interesting, plausible, and intelligible knowledge (i.e., potential discovery). The open discovery systems (ODS) component of LRD starts with a problem to be solved, and generates solutions to that problem through potential discovery. We have been using ODS LRD to identify potential treatments or preventative actions for challenging medical problems, among myriad other applications. The five immediately preceding papers in this Special Issue describe the application of ODS LRD to Raynaud's Phenomenon (RP), cataracts, Parkinson's Disease (PD), Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and Water Purification (WP). We describe the lessons learned from each application, and how the techniques can be improved further.Generation of much potential discovery using ODS LRD is possible when the conceptual roadblocks to discovery are removed. Some of these roadblocks include use of numerical filters that are unrelated to generating discovery, and excessive reliance on literatures directly related to the problem literature of interest. The issue of how to handle large amounts of potential discovery has not been addressed in the literature, since most ODS LRD researchers have tried to find a relatively few potential discovery items. We present a development strategy that capitalizes on the large amounts of potential discovery we have identified.     

Exploring technology paths: The development of alternative transport fuels in Sweden 2007-2020

By using socio-technical scenarios, we investigate how present policy choices may affect the development of alternative transport fuels in Sweden. One important choice for policy lies in the balance between general tax exemptions stimulating the market for alternative fuels, and funding of research and development more directly promoting new technology. The implications of this choice are illustrated with four diverging development paths until 2020. In the market-oriented scenarios, we illustrate consequences of breaking the dominance of entrenched technologies and demonstrating a growing market potential for alternatives, but also the risks with a large focus on first generation renewable fuels. In the technology-oriented scenarios, we point out the value of keeping variety among niches in this stage of the transition. In conclusion, if policy is implemented without taking the dynamic forces within the system into account, there is a risk that any measure leads the system into a dead end. But if policy strives to balance the development in different parts of the technological system while making use of various prevailing forces of change, a multitude of different efforts can contribute to the development of a more sustainable transport system.     

Foresight and innovation in the context of industrial clusters: The case of some Italian districts

The “territory” is widely recognized in the literature on business strategy as a critical driver of industrial competitiveness (see, as an example, Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations). The generation and exploitation of new knowledge, both tacit and explicit, through the process of socialization, articulation, combination and internalization (see Nonaka and Takeuchi, The Knowledge-Creating Company) is essential to enable innovation of processes and products of “local” firms.Our recent Foresight exercises in the metal working and machinery district of Lecco and in the silk district of Como show that Foresight can play an important role in creating and exploiting new knowledge, and that different methodologies can be more or less effective to this aim.Critical technology list and interactive workshops, with the participation of entrepreneurs of SMEs and technologists, are more suited to foster the transfer of technologies that have overcome the initial stage of the life cycle and that have been already applied in other sectors. However, when radical innovations are needed in order to face the challenges posed by global competition, other methodologies, as Scenarios, are more appropriate. Even if these approaches are complex and time and resource consuming, they may be very effective in actively involving the most relevant private and public stakeholders of a district, and in making them to envisage the long term future of the economic, social, and cultural structure of their district. In this way Foresight drives the small entrepreneurs, the district stakeholders and the medium and large size firms to play the critical roles of Nonaka and Takeuchi's “frontline employees”, “senior managers” and “middle managers” in their “knowledge creating company”: the first ones grasp what the district is; the second ones build the vision of what it ought to be; the third ones, serve as a bridge between the future and the present.     

Comparing technological hype cycles: Towards a theory

The notion of ‘hype’ is widely used and represents a tempting way to characterize developments in technological fields. The term appears in business as well as in academic domains. Consultancy firms offer technological hype cycle models to determine the state of development of technological fields in order to facilitate strategic investment decisions. In Science, Technology and Innovation Studies the concept of hype is considered in studies on the dynamics of expectations in innovation processes, which focuses on the performative force of expectations. What is still lacking is a theory of hype patterns that is able to explain the different shapes of hype cycles in different contexts. In this paper we take a first step towards closing this gap by studying and comparing the results of case studies on three hypes in three different empirical domains: voice over internet protocol (VoIP), gene therapy and high-temperature superconductivity. The cases differ in terms of the type of technology and the characteristics of the application environment. We conclude that hype patterns indeed vary a lot, and that the interplay of expectations at different levels affects the ability of a field to cope with hype and disappointment.     

Idea Competitions under scrutiny: Acquisition,intelligence or public relations mechanism?

Idea Competitions (ICs) are becoming a popular mechanism chosen by firms to perform Open Innovation. They are a way to engage with external sources of knowledge such as individual entrepreneurs and small firms who are asked to submit ideas and compete for a prize. However, little is known about the success of ICs as acquisition mechanisms. The researchers conducted interviews in five multinational companies to evaluate the effects of using ICs as an acquisition mechanism. Although still preliminary, the results of this study show that the success of ICs as an acquisition mechanism remains uncertain because their output (i.e. the number of ideas acquired) is often low compared to the input (i.e. the number of ideas submitted) and effort required to run them (e.g. to vet ideas). Across the cases observed, ICs appear to be more successful at identifying and acquiring early-stage ideas, particularly those outside the current business focus. The study shows that ICs deliver other functional benefits such as improved intelligence and public relations and that these need to be considered as part of the evaluation of the IC's success. The paper concludes by discussing the conditions in which ICs are implemented and the implications for Open Innovation theory.     

Technology evaluation in Taiwan's technology industries: Strategies, trajectories, and innovations

Technology evaluation, as an organizational process, is the essential ability to comprehend the values of technologies very soon after they emerge. Meanwhile, the technology evaluation process is inevitably influenced by the firm's industrial context, such as its technological trajectory. This study defines technology evaluation strategy in terms of the processes, methods, and participants involved, and uses this definition as a taxonomy to explore different types of technology evaluation strategies. A survey on the technological industries is conducted to explore types of technology evaluation strategies and their relationships with the advantages of different types of innovation under the effects of different technological trajectories. The survey identifies four types of technology evaluation strategies, namely, those of the flexible executive strategist, the emergent executive intuitionist, the deliberate quantitative strategist, and the deliberate consensual strategist, are identified. This study has found that certain types of technology evaluation strategies have better innovation performances than the others. The patterns of technological trajectories are also found to influence a firm's technology evaluation strategy and the advantages of certain types of innovations. The established explanations of the relationships among the technological trajectory, innovation type, and technology evaluation strategies may guide technology businesses to develop a better technology evaluation capability. The theoretical framework developed in this research enriches the strategic management literature with a new taxonomy for technology evaluation strategies.     

ExpertLens: A system for eliciting opinions from a large pool of non-collocated experts with diverse knowledge

The complexity of policy decision-making raises the need to elicit opinions from large and heterogeneous groups of stakeholders with broad and diverse sets of expertise. Existing options for elicitation include small face-to-face panels of experts by using the Nominal Group Technique (NGT), large Delphi panels whose members do not interact with each other face-to-face, and crowdsourcing, which involves an open call for input issued to a large community of people. In an attempt to close the gap between the practical needs of policy makers and the methodological challenges associated with eliciting opinions of large, diverse, and distributed groups, we have developed a new online elicitation system and methodology called ExpertLens. By optimizing the direct interactions of NGT with the larger number of Delphi participants and the wisdom of “selected crowds,” our approach is designed to save on the costs associated with traditional expert panels, while increasing accuracy in elicitation by reducing the potential for group process losses that can occur in large, diverse, and non-collocated panels whose members interact via asynchronous online discussion boards. The ExpertLens approach is iterative, does not require participants to develop consensus, and determines what the group “thinks” by statistically analyzing data collected in all rounds of the elicitation. This paper describes the ExpertLens system and methodology, briefly discusses recent ExpertLens trials, provides conceptual arguments for why it is an appropriate model for eliciting expert opinions, illustrates its main components and analytics by using an infrastructure investment example, and discusses a research agenda for testing the underlying tenets of the ExpertLens approach.