Conference themes

Main conference themes:

The History of Institutions and Technologies

Historical studies of technical change such as those by Chris Freeman, Nathan Rosenberg, Paul David, and Nick von Tunzelmann provided a foundation for the early development of innovation studies as an autonomous research field. Examining the emergence and evolution of technologies and institutions (and their co-evolution) provides invaluable insights to understanding the mechanisms and pitfalls of economic growth. It also allows identifying the main ingredients of failure and success in different institutional contexts, including path-dependence and lock-in to trajectories of development that might direct or constrain catching-up processes. Historical analyses guide policy makers in shaping economic transitions that involve arduous processes of building capabilities and infrastructures. Nick von Tunzelmann’s contributions to this field are legion, from his path-breaking analysis of the impact of steam power technology on the UK industrial development in his doctoral thesis to his examinations of modern technologies in both high technology sectors and those sectors in which the role of technology has been largely ignored.

Economics of technical change

Progress in the study of the economics of technical change within the neo-Schumpeterian tradition has accelerated, producing a significant body of theoretical and empirical literature. This literature includes new techniques for modelling the microand macro-foundations of the impact of technical change on economic growth, quantitative and qualitative empirical analyses of sectoral and spatial patterns of technical change, and firm-level studies of innovation and economic performance. Much of this research not only challenges the theoretical apparatus of neo-classical economics, but also contributes in fundamental ways to our understanding of current processes of economic change. Technical progress is increasingly recognised as incremental, with periodic disruptions from radical innovations that restructure industries and institutions. Nick’s contributions have emphasised the pervasiveness and continuity of technological change even in industries that are conventionally regarded as ‘low technology’. These contributions have helped to rebalance the current debate on technology, very much dominated by a technology-push perspective from ICT and biotechnology. In his view, the demand side often plays an equally active role in shaping the pace and direction of technological change – a view which he dates back to the classical works of Malthus, whom Nick regards as the first great evolutionary economist. Nick has also crucially addressed these issues in the context of BRICS and the transition economies, where human and natural resources are being combined into new systems of innovation providing the foundations for 21st century economic growth.

Policy for Technical Change

Any policy agenda should have at the forefront issues like the exclusion of many countries from the benefits of technological progress, the disastrous consequences that the absence of any public regulation of new technologies might have, the economic inequalities which technological change might create within and across countries, and, more recently, the consequences of climate change and technological progress for the natural environment. As the ‘sustainability’ agenda has grown in mainstream global governance, international technology policy is for the first time, in any systematic way, looking beyond endogenous market pressures for productivity and competitiveness. The last decades have therefore witnessed the advent of new and urgent policy imperatives for technology change. Recognising at an early stage the historic significance of these ambitions for socially-deliberated transitions in the direction of technology change, Nick has made a number of contributions to setting agendas and exploring implications of technological change on the processes of economic catching up. In particular, he has emphasised the need for and carried out himself comparative study of policy institutions, with a view to understanding patterns of convergence and divergence in technology policy as well as identifying policy innovations and dead-ends. In some of his recent work he has been extending his new conceptualizations of ‘interactive dynamic capabilities’ and of ‘network (mis)alignment’ to the circumstances confronting lead-actors from the public sector, including government departments and universities.