Developing as a latecomer country is tricky. It implies competing with established production systems that benefit from know-how, economies of scale, and network externalities accumulated over decades. It is thus unsurprising that very few countries have been able to close the technological and income gap. Those that did, like South Korea and China, started by inviting foreign investors, buying licenses, and emulating the early movers’ proven business models until they had enough capabilities to chart their own pathways and become wealthy knowledge societies—and role models for other latecomers. Global warming and other major environmental crises, however, reveal the unsustainability of a techno-economic paradigm based on burning fossil fuel and maximization of material throughput and consumption. Hence, latecomers can no longer build on emulating technologies and institutions, but need to start deviating from established practices early on. Still, the successful country cases hold important policy lessons for them.
{"title":"Catching Up or Developing Differently? Techno-Institutional Learning with a Sustainable Planet in Mind","authors":"T. Altenburg","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3717245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3717245","url":null,"abstract":"Developing as a latecomer country is tricky. It implies competing with established production systems that benefit from know-how, economies of scale, and network externalities accumulated over decades. It is thus unsurprising that very few countries have been able to close the technological and income gap. Those that did, like South Korea and China, started by inviting foreign investors, buying licenses, and emulating the early movers’ proven business models until they had enough capabilities to chart their own pathways and become wealthy knowledge societies—and role models for other latecomers. Global warming and other major environmental crises, however, reveal the unsustainability of a techno-economic paradigm based on burning fossil fuel and maximization of material throughput and consumption. Hence, latecomers can no longer build on emulating technologies and institutions, but need to start deviating from established practices early on. Still, the successful country cases hold important policy lessons for them.","PeriodicalId":210747,"journal":{"name":"The Challenges of Technology and Economic Catch-up in Emerging Economies","volume":"85 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127408936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the context of emerging economies, long-run economic growth and development encompass mechanisms from technological catching-up to moving forward by one’s upgrading. However, as the economy reaches the middle-income range, economic growth mostly slows down unless adopting strategies for building technological capabilities. To identify the bottleneck in sustainable technological development and the ways to avoid the middle-income trap, therefore, this chapter focuses on the development patterns of two different types of technological capabilities: implementation and concept design capabilities. Our first finding from the empirical study emphasizes the need for the development of the concept design capability, describing the middle-income trap as a “capability transition failure” or “middle-innovation trap”. Secondly, discussing difficulties of the capability transition from the institutional rigidity perspective, this chapter highlights “innovation commons” as a coherent transition platform for the development of concept design capability.
{"title":"Middle Innovation Trap","authors":"Jeong-Dong Lee, Chulwoo Baek, Sira Maliphol, Jung-In Yeon","doi":"10.17323/2500-2597.2019.1.6.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17323/2500-2597.2019.1.6.18","url":null,"abstract":"In the context of emerging economies, long-run economic growth and development encompass mechanisms from technological catching-up to moving forward by one’s upgrading. However, as the economy reaches the middle-income range, economic growth mostly slows down unless adopting strategies for building technological capabilities. To identify the bottleneck in sustainable technological development and the ways to avoid the middle-income trap, therefore, this chapter focuses on the development patterns of two different types of technological capabilities: implementation and concept design capabilities. Our first finding from the empirical study emphasizes the need for the development of the concept design capability, describing the middle-income trap as a “capability transition failure” or “middle-innovation trap”. Secondly, discussing difficulties of the capability transition from the institutional rigidity perspective, this chapter highlights “innovation commons” as a coherent transition platform for the development of concept design capability.","PeriodicalId":210747,"journal":{"name":"The Challenges of Technology and Economic Catch-up in Emerging Economies","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125351128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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