Technology catch-up

Technology catch-up is the process by which countries with relatively low technological levels can benefit from available production knowledge and therefore reduce the productivity and income gap with respect to leading countries. It involves a productive transformation process that embraces both technological change and diversification into new economic activities and sectors, encompassing two particular but reciprocally related essential concepts: productive capabilities and productive capacities, through investments in physical and human capital and also improving relevant factors within national technology and social capabilities. Catching up envisages a pattern of technological change and diversification with the speed and sustainability that less developed countries need to undertake them. Growth rates of lagging countries will surpass those of developed countries until efforts are incorporated into R&D that enable benefiting from both technology transfer and knowledge spillovers in the context of an innovative national system based on local specificities. The concept is developed by first defining catch-up convergence within a theoretical framework, the initial concept associated with technological catch-up; secondly by specifying the technological gap hypothesis; third, highlighting factors that affect technological catch-up, and fourth, identifying technological and social capabilities and discussing the challenges of leapfrogging in innovation systems.