West German science policy since the early 1960's: trends and objectives

The trends in West German science policy since the early 1960' are analyzed and compared to other industrially advanced countries. Government expenditures on research and development (R & D) are compared in their totality and also with regard to specific objectives such as defence, civil space, civil nuclear, general advancement of science, mining and manufacturing, agriculture, economic and social services.The trend of total government expenditure on R & D in West Germany iss characterized by a growth rate higher than in many other countries, such as the USA, the UK, France, Japan and the Netherlands. Also in each of the single objectives of government R & D, West German expenditure as a rule grew faster than in these countries. Among the different objectives, “general advancement of science” is given highest priority in West Germany, whereas the military sector is relatively small. In both trends and priorities, West Germany is more similar to Japan and the Netherlands than to the USA, the UK and France.The author discusses motives and intentions which may have affected these trends. He argues that West German science policy cannot be understood as a response to immediate economic problems, such as labour shortage or an alleged lag in technological progress in West German industry. In the early sixties West German science policy was still determined by efforts to catch up in certain technological fields from which West Germany had been excluded up to 1955 by allies' restrictions. In the late sixties, concern focussed on West Germany's long-term technological competitiveness in general.     

论韩国造船工业的发展和技术创新

韩国作为新兴工业化国家,其造船工业的兴起是世界工业发展史上的一个奇迹。韩国造船工业于20世纪70年代初从零点起步,经过短短二十多年的发展,年造船产量超过欧美传统造船强国,并在90年代几次取代日本而居世界第一位。本文着重分析韩国造船工业的发展和技术创新状况,探讨韩国造船工业发展和技术创新的若干促进因素,为中国的工业发展寻找国外借鉴。     

Rates of invention: international patent comparisons

The increased patenting activity of foreign nationals in the United States has been a source of recent concern, and the fear has been expressed that the US is becoming relatively less technologically inventive. This paper investigates some possible causes of the increased foreign patenting activity and also briefly examines the determinants of patent filings by a country's own residents. The countries covered include: Canada, France, West Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.Based on data on patent applications filed and some preliminary regression analysis, the paper finds that the rising foreign patenting activity in the US probably does not reflect increased foreign inventiveness vis-à-vis the US. However, foreign innovativeness may be increasing relative to the US. Over the period 1963 – 1974, the domestic patent base, measured by the number of patent applications filed by nationals in their home countries, has shown little change in any country except for Japan. Rather, multiple patent applications and a greater propensity to patent abroad, induced by the possibilities of exporting, appear to be the sources of the increase in foreign patent applications in the US and also in Japan.     

Managing competences in entrepreneurial technology firms: a comparative institutional analysis of Germany, Sweden and the UK

Innovating firms in new industries face a number of technological and market risks, especially appropriability and competence destruction. However, the relative significance of these varies between different sub-sectors, and so do managerial ways of dealing with them. These in turn are influenced by institutional frameworks, particularly those governing skill formation systems and labour markets. Consequently, the relative success of firms in fields with different appropriability and competence destruction risks is likely to vary between countries with contrasting patterns of labour market organisation. In the biotechnology and computer software industries, there are major differences in the dominant risks faced by innovating firms such that we would expect their relative success to differ between Germany, Sweden and the UK. While the UK and, to a limited extent, Sweden, have developed institutions similar to those found in the US that help govern “radically innovative” firm competences, Germany has invested in institutional frameworks associated with “competency enhancing” human resource practices that give its firms an advantage in more generic technologies in which organisational complexity is higher. While the distribution of public companies across sub-sectors broadly follows these expectations, Sweden has developed considerable strength in middleware software. This results from changing property rights and personnel policies at Ericsson.     

Management perceptions of government incentives to technological innovation in england, Trance, West Germany and Japan

This paper reports on four studies (in France, Germany (FRG), Japan, and United Kingdom) exploring reactions of industrial managers to government incentives (GIs), laws, policies, regulations, and other interventions intended to stimulate technological innovation. Propositions supported by the results are: (1) there are significant differences among industrial managers in different countries in their attitudes toward government actions relevant to the RD/I process; (2) Government actions to stimulate innovation are not perceived as salient to industrial RD/I (R&D/Innovation) decision making; and (3) Government actions in general are perceived to delay introduction of innovations into the market.German and Japanese firms seemed most aware of, and favorably disposed toward, GIs. Low technology firms in the UK were more supportive of GIs than high technology firms. The opposite was the case in Japan and France, while little overall difference existed among firms in Germany. One must exercise care, however, in drawing inferences from such international comparisons; countries differ in the nature, scope, and administration of programs, as well as the effect of cultural characteristics. Managers in all countries were unanimous that general government policies (economic and otherwise) and general market and competitive conditions have a more significant impact on firm RD/I decision making than the specific incentive programs. Incentive programs were, with some exceptions, considered orders of magnitude too small to be of significance. The burden of administering procedurally complex and inflexible incentive programs and dealing with cumbersome government bureaucracy were considered significant detriments. General infrastructural elements such as the educational system, social recognition and support, and government standards-setting were considered more important than direct incentives.     

Technological innovation capabilities in the thin film transistor-liquid crystal display industries of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan

The study described herein uses US Patent and Trademark Office data to assess variations in technological innovation capabilities, and their influence on market performance, among leading TFT-LCD producers in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The empirical results suggest that TFT-LCD producers in Korea and Taiwan built innovation capabilities by creating complementary knowledge for Japanese firms, whose technologies lead the way in the industry. The results also show that latecomers sought to expand production by selecting certain technological fields, but that they exploited these fields in different ways. Specifically, Korean conglomerates increased their scale of technology in order to improve their technological positions, while Taiwanese producers pursued innovations that strengthened their technological efficiency. While Japanese firms led the way in terms of both technology and market share during the 1990s, they then evolved to become merely technological leaders from 2000 onwards. However, Japanese firms have since renewed their business strategies to counter the aggressive market expansion of their competitors by strengthening the protection of their intellectual property rights through inter-keiretsu collaborations in technological niches, and by securing leadership in the market in high value-added key components in order to retain more of the profits from their own innovations. Four policy imperatives for both technology leading and latecomer countries regarding the development of sustainable industries associated with the industrial cycle and market dynamics are discussed.     

R&D, knowledge spillovers and company productivity performance

Using company accounts data for 5 countries (US, UK, Japan, France and Germany) we analyse the relationship between intangible assets and productivity. We integrate the company data with industry information on tangible and intangible investments and skill composition of the labour force. The industry data are summarised in two different taxonomies, factor and skill intensive groups, which account for differences in the knowledge intensity and innovative activities within sectors. The results provide evidence of higher productivity in R&D and skill intensive industries. This can be interpreted as evidence in favour of the presence of spillover effects.     

Government policies towards industrial innovation: a review

Existing economic theories show that continuing innovation, diffusion, and technical and managerial improvement are necessary for economic growth and international competitiveness in the industrially advanced countries. But knowledge of why, where and how governments should intervene in the processes of industrial innovations stems more from trial and error than from systematic empirical information of the nature and extent of the hindrances to economically and socially desirable innovations, and of the effectiveness of alternative government policies to remove them. Nonetheless, past empirical studies do offer some clues.Differences amongst industrial sectors. The sources of new technology vary widely amongst inustrial sectors: in the costs of innovation, in the relative importance of outside suppliers of equipment and materials, of large and small firms, and of full-time R & D departments as compared to part-time innovative activities (sect. 7, 8). Similarly, the conditions for successful innovation vary amongst sectors (sect.6). Thus, government policies designed to influence innovation are likely to act with different intensities in different industries.The management of innovation. Nonetheless, there are some features common to innovation in different industries. Considerable costs beyond R & D are often necessary before the innovations reach commercial use (sect.4). And the following managerial characteristics are in general associated with successful innovation: a deliberate policy of seeking innovations; close and careful attention to customer requirements; good personal communications both within the firm and with outside sources of relevant knowledge; a style of management that is ‘organic’ and ‘participatory’ rather than ‘hierarchical’ and ‘authoritarian’; strong project leadership; and a strong engineering capability (sect. 6).R & D managers are still unable to predict the outcome of R & D projects to a useful degree of accuracy and, in the literature on methods of project selection, very little attention is paid to market uncertainties. Furthermore, a greater use of conventional investment appraisal criteria in deciding on R & D projects may re-inforce the already observed tendency in industry towards short-term, low-risk projects, to the neglect of longer-term, high-risk projects (sect. 5).Governments should therefore examine whether the benefits of policies towards education and management advisory services for innovation might outweigh their costs. They may also have a significant role to play in financing longer-term research that is basic to the development of industrial technology (subsect. 12.5).The nature of market and production demands. The direction of industrial innovation is often very sensitive to market and production demands (sect. 3). This fact, together with the high degree of market uncertainty facing innovating firms (sect. 5), suggest that governments can potentially influence both the pace and the direction of industrial innovation through their influence on the scale of industrial, consumer and public service demands. However, this potential influence will become real only if users of innovations are able to specify the innovations that they need, or to evaluate those that they get. This is generally the case for industrial demand, but not in consumer and public service markets, where fashion, insensitivity to users' needs and lack of technical competence often prevail. Government-funded technological institutes and laboratories are ideally placed to provide such technical competence (sub-sect. 12.3).Economic incentives and rewards for innovation. A whole range of economic factors are said to influence the resources, the incentives and the rewards for innovation: for example, the degree of monopoly or the degree of competition, the patent system, the level of profits, the level of taxation, and the level of demand. The empirical evidence on the effects of most of these factors on industrial innovation is either inconclusive or non-existent. However, in the USA a close relationship has been observed between growth of industry sales and growth of industry-financed R & D activities (sect. 10). The rate of growth of demand is also one of the key factors influencing the rate of diffusion of innovations amongst their potential population of users (sects. 11, 12.2).The government-financed scientific and technological infrastructure. Scientific and technological knowledge from outside of innovating firms is often crucial to the completion of successful innovations, and three UK studies show that a significant proportion of this outside knowledge comes from government-financed technological institutes and laboratories, and from the universities (sect. 3). If the same is true in other countries, it should be an essential feature of any government policy towards industrial innovation to know how effectively government-funded laboratories and universities provide supportive knowledge to industry, and how government laboratories should be organised and financed (subsect. 12.4).Direct government-financing of innovative activities in industry. Governments specifically finance R & D activities in industrial firms, although these expenditures are less than those for general industrial development (sect. 13). These R & D activities in industry are relatively more important in France and UK, than in F.R. Germany and the Netherlands.In the four countries, more than 70% of all civilian government R & D activities related to industry are spent on aircraft, space, nuclear energy and electronics (subsect. 14.4). In all these high technologies, governments attempted in the 1960's to implement ‘policies for innovation’, involving government procurement, industrial mergers and attempts at European co-operation, in addition to the financing of R & D (subsect. 14.5). Government expenditures on civilian R & D related to other industrial sectors are very much smaller in all four countries (subsect 14.4).Where should governments intervene? A, number of attempts have been made to develop a formal framework of criteria to assist governments in deciding where they should intervene in industrial innovation. They all run into the following difficulties: dealing with multiple policy objectives; assessing national costs and benefits; comparing with alternative policies, choosing appropriate policy instruments (sect. 17).How should governments intervene? Very little information is available on the effectiveness of various policy instruments that have been used by governments in order to promote innovation in industry. Although it is often possible to measure the inputs into such policies, the measurement of their outputs (or results) is more difficult. Nonetheless, detailed studies would enable some such measurements to be made, and internationally comparable studies would increase the range of experiences and the number of cases that could be examined (sect. 18).Why should governments intervene? A full appreciation of the nature and scale of hindrances to industrial innovation, on which governments should act to remove, requires direct information on what innovations are (or are not) being introduced by industry, and why they are (or are not) being inyroduced. This information can best be obtained from analyses of the behaviour of industrial firms. They would differ from most existing innovation studies that concentrate on asking how firms must behave in order to make successful innovation, by asking what innovations are attempted, and why firms are stimulated to attempt them (sect. 19).     

Technology and economic growth: He case of Japan

This paper provides a general background of the characteristics of the Japanese economy that relate to its use of technology to promote economic growth. We do not consider the common view that Japan just catching up with the technological level of other industrialized countries explains its remarkable rate of post-war economic growth. Rather we argue that the effective importation of technology requires complementary resources of management, skilled labor, capital, and domestic R&D as well as public to facilitate the transfer of technology. Japan has such complementary resources and public policies. The first part of the paper describes the process of technology importation and current concerns in Japan about dependence on imported technology. The second part of the paper describes Japan's domestic R&D effort and its major reliance on private sector R&D, supplemented, however, with government intervention in selected industries. The third part of the paper examines the institutional settings that had the significant impacts on Japan's introduction of new technology. These institutional factors include 1) post-war economic growth and changes in industry structure, 2) the character of competition, 3) the business group and 4) characteristics and organization in the supply of labor.     

面向全球经济治理的世界地缘政治经济结构探析

面对全球经济治理,文章从克鲁格曼的地理本性出发试图认识全球治理的地缘政治经济基础。作者认为,全球经济关系是地缘政治经济结构的基础。通过收集世界21个主要经济体的2000—2012年的金融业和制造业增加值数据,运用区位商模型分析世界主要国家的金融业与制造业发展区位,同时对各国资源输出情况进行对比,开展对典型国家或地区进行地缘经济基础分类。研究表明:全球一体化使世界典型化国家类型趋于明显,呈现出新的"三个世界"特征——美国、英国、瑞士、新加坡和中国香港属金融业主导国家(地区);泰国、中国、韩国、德国、日本、越南和中国台湾属制造业主导国家(地区);加拿大、俄罗斯、印度尼西亚、马来西亚、澳大利亚和墨西哥属资源开发业主导国家(地区)。印度、巴西和法国目前在多领域均得到发展,虽然属过渡型国家(地区),但在进一步演化中,向一定的国家类型逼近。这种地缘经济学的相互关系,通过GDP溢出分析得到进一步证实。总之,地理本性决定的经济分工分类,构成了全球经济治理的地缘政治经济学基础,将影响全球经济治理。     

Internationalization of corporate R&D: a study of Japanese and Swedish corporations

Based on a questionnaire survey of large corporations in Japan and Sweden, representing chemical, electronic and mechanical engineering sectors, this paper probes three research issues: (1) the level, pace and possible nation-specific mode of internationalization of R&D, (2) the relative roles of demand and supply side factors, and (3) the possible internationalization of industry–university collaborations. The results show a general growth of international R&D across sectors and countries and a particular Japanese mode of internationalization of R&D with a high pace although starting from lower levels, a strong supply-led component, and a strong emphasis on collaborations with US universities. The concept of psychic distance was found to be of limited relevance as an explanatory concept. The paper argues that due to, e.g., technology diversification and emerging technology market conditions, internationalization of R&D will in general become increasingly supply-led, and as industry–university collaborations internationalize, competitive US universities will become increasingly important and internationalize themselves, some conceivably becoming genuine multinational universities.     

The organic chemicals industry of the USSR: a case-study in the measurement of comparative technological sophistication by means of kilogram-prices

The comparative kilogram-price of an equivalent product group in international trade is a rough indication of underlying technological capability. Although there are many theoretical and practical difficulties involved in applying this approach to East-West trade, these difficulties can be minimised by a careful selection of product groups. In this connection, advanced chemical products are particularly suitable because the chemical industry is one in which both kilogram-prices and technological sophistication tend to increase hand-in-hand at successive stages of manufacture. The results of this enquiry are quite striking. From the standpoint of bilateral trade, the kilogram-prices of Soviet and East European exports to the EEC countries are consistently lower than those of corresponding imports from the EEC. Throughout the period 1960–1972 these differentials appears to be closing either very slowly or not at all, while the Soviet and East European share of the EEC marked has remained more or less constant or has declined since the mid-1960's. From the alternative perspective of the “neutral” Yugoslavian market, the kilogram-prices of EEC exports are again consistently higher than those obtained by the Comecon coun tries. Moreover, there has been a considerable eroson in the market share of the Comecon countries since the mid-1960's. These general findings are broadly in line with other kinds of estimates and suggest that in these relatively advanced and dynamic sectors of industry, Soviet and East European technology is at present substantially inferior to that of the Common Market countries.     

The effects of owner identity and external governance systems on R&D investments: A study of Western European firms

This paper builds on agency and institutional theory to extend the analysis of the effects of ownership and control on R&D investments by considering the influence of different types of ownership and of institutional corporate governance systems. Our empirical analysis is based on a unique dataset of 1000 firms publicly-traded in six European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the UK). Controlling for industry- and firm-level effects, our findings show that higher shareholding by families is negatively associated with R&D investment. Moreover, widely-held firms invest less in R&D in the United Kingdom than in Continental European countries, thus suggesting the existence of a greater pressure towards the reduction of R&D in market-based governance systems. The results are robust against possible sample selection biases due to firms’ discretional R&D disclosure.     

Rethinking the public sector: idiosyncrasies of biotechnology commercialization as motors of national R&D reform in Germany and Japan

Recent policies to promote biotechnology are motors of broader R&D reform in Germany and Japan. The idiosyncrasies of biotechnology commercialization could not be readily accommodated by these countries’ traditional technology policies, thus prompting reforms in institutions governing the commercialization of basic scientific research. These reforms provide a novel perspective on the nature of innovation in biotechnology; while previous research has underlined factors such as the national science base, industry–university links, entrepreneurship and venture capital, the German and Japanese cases highlight the importance of other mediating variables such as the level of public governance within national research institutions, the autonomy of the university/research sector, and the historical role of the public sector generally.     

Local context,academic entrepreneurship and open science: Publication secrecy and commercial activity among Japanese and US scientists

Like the US before it, Japan has adopted a series of policy initiatives designed to encourage the commercialization of academic science. However, such initiatives may also adversely affect “open-science”. Based on matched surveys of almost 1000 researchers in Japan and over 800 in the US, the paper examines rates of commercial activity, reasons to patent, and secrecy related to research results. In particular, it examines the extent to which participation in commercial activity is associated with publication secrecy. The results show that patenting rates are higher in Japan, while industry funding is more common in the US. In addition, the overall level of publication secrecy is greater in Japan. And, in both countries, individuals who are commercially active are less likely to share their research results through publication. But, patents are less directly linked to commercial activity in Japan than in the US, and have less impact on academic secrecy. The results suggest that academic entrepreneurship is associated with reduced participation in open science, but that the extent of adverse effects depends significantly on institutional context.     

Gender-specific patterns in patenting and publishing

Measuring the output of men and women in science and technology has previously been mostly restricted to case studies or small-scale surveys. Based on an analysis of patent and publication databases, this paper applies a methodology to systematically assign the gender to the names of inventors and authors. The method is applied to 14 countries. The results of this investigation reveal substantial differences across countries in terms of women's relative contribution¹ to science and technology, with the central European countries of Germany, Austria and Switzerland all ranking comparatively low in this respect. We also examine trends over time, showing that the data on women's share of publications - unlike the results for patents - hardly increase over time for the already better-performing nations.     

The prevalence of publicly stimulated innovations –A comparison of Finland and Sweden, 1970–2013

While the role played by the state in stimulating innovation in the private sector has been a prevalent interest in innovation research, studies analysing the impacts of public interventions have usually focused on individual policies, programs or projects. Public stimulation is hence often studied from a relatively restricted and temporarily confined perspective, leaving a macro-level and longer-term perspective unrecognized. This article provides further evidence on the matter by examining how many innovations in Finland and Sweden have been publicly stimulated through funding or research collaboration, over a period of more than four decades (1970–2013). Our main source is a new innovation database constructed following the Literature Based Innovation Output (LBIO) method, which gathers the most significant innovations of both countries for the study period, totalling approximately 4100 Swedish and 2600 Finnish innovations. Our results indicate that the public sector has played a very prominent role in stimulating private innovation in both countries, and with an increasing trend. This is especially true for Finland, where 35–55% of the innovations of the period have been stimulated by public funding and 25–65% by collaboration with public research. In Sweden, the share of publicly stimulated innovations has been somewhat lower and erratic, but has increased over time.     

Evaluations of innovation programmes in selected European countries

The incorporation of an evaluation procedure in a growing number of innovation policy programmes has now become an accepted feature in the public management of many countries. There already exists substantial experience on the conduct of such evaluations. The purpose of this paper is to present some sample evaluations of measures to promote innovation in a number of European OECD countries (Federal Republic of Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden). Reference will be made to four of them to illustrate the diversity of the evaluative approaches applied to the wide spectrum of measures to promote innovation. Each of these examples will be studied in detail in order to identify their characteristic features, particularly with attention to their causes, performance and their use in political decision processes.A conceptual framework will be presented in order to propose a typology of various forms of evaluation and to characterize the four case studies. It shows that concept and process of evaluations are strongly influences by the specific context and consensus or dissent on objectives and resources. The case studies give a clearer insight into the factors determining the use of results of evaluations; and to what extent the role of evaluations varies from pure legitimation to a systematic and rational basis for decision making in the area of technology policy.Innovation policy consists of government actions towards technological developments and their implementation in the economy. Innovation, in this case, is defined as the development of technologically new or improved products or techniques and their commercialization in the market or implementation within production. Often evaluation means the examination and assessment of the mode of action and of the effectiveness of government innovation policy. However, finding a general interpretation of the expression “evaluation of an innovation policy” presents greater difficulty, and here wide divergences are evident. In the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands, the term encompasses all forms of monitoring and assessing the operation and/or the effectiveness of an innovation policy. In Sweden, evaluation usually means performance of the a posteriori analysis of a measure. The terms “ex ante evaluation” and “follow-up evaluation” are respectively used for the explicit designation of prospective and retrospective analyses. In France, the term “evaluation” is associated with the notion of value. It often carries the connotation of a value assessment with the full monitoring implications of that expression.     

Exploring the cross-country gap in patenting: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

This paper benchmarks the patent activities of a sample of OECD countries against the world frontier and explores the sources of the cross-country differences in patenting (regarded as a proxy for innovation). A patent production frontier is estimated for a panel of 21 OECD countries over the 1990-2002 period using Stochastic Frontier Analysis. Patenting performance for each country is decomposed into basic patenting capacity and patenting efficiency. The gap between Europe and the world leaders in terms of basic patenting capacity remains substantial with little sign of convergence over the sample period. In terms of patenting efficiency, Japan, Germany and Italy have improved their relative position in recent years. The gap in patenting performance between the UK and the world frontier is due to relative underperformance in both patenting capacity and efficiency in patent production. Institutional factors are found to be significantly associated with the patenting efficiency of an economy.