Аircraft design schools as actors in the history of technology. On the example of the statistical analysis of the world aircraft construction school

Abstract

The design schools in airplane manufacturing are considered. For decades, these social structures retain their own features, manifesting in the specifics of the created airplanes. As a result, the variability in R&D intensity, measured as the frequency of new designs appearing, is much less than the variability in output. It is shown for the first time that variations in the distribution of R&D across countries are also much smaller than variations in output. This indicates the difficulty of creating design schools and the necessity to maintain them carefully.