Systems of innovation

[bantam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

G'day Peter,

You write:

> Right.  I argued in "Actually Existing Globalization" (published in a
> collection a
> few years ago) that industrial policy is ultimately understandable
> only as
> technology policy, but that the era of national technology (or
> innovation) systems
> is largely over.  At the time I reviewed some of the literature pro
> and con; I
> think there are some references in my article.  I'll be glad to send
> an electronic
> copy to anyone interested.
>
> Peter
>

I've not seen the paper (and I'd really like to ... ), but I'd argue the
US has exhibited many signs of an almost mercantilist corporatist policy
approach to optimising intial advantage in IT - pushing TRIPs into the
Uruguay Round, allowing anti-competitive mergers and such to ensure
world-beating economies of scope and scale, pressuring the rest of the
world into abandoning public telecommunications backbones - in fact -
policy timing, from the AT&T transformation, to fighting off Japanese
HDTV standards, to the shift of the public/private internet debate in
the early nineties, to letting the money-rich but opportunity-poor
BabyBells off the leash in '96, to allowing media monoliths to
consolidate across media in '02 - well, it all looks like a technology
policy of sorts - perhaps at a structural (diffusion and control) rather
than technical (invention and innovation) level (the DoD drove a lot of
the latter before the end of the space race and Vietnam War occasioned a
need for civvie market opportunities, in the context of the post '73 dip
in national competitiveness and national accounts all 'round), but
arguably a technology policy nevertheless.

Or not?

Cheers,
Rob.