Unconventional Technology Transfer and High-tech Development: The Case of Informatics in Newly Industrialising Countries

Industrial development in newly-industrialising countries (NICs) is still mainly based on mature industries like steel, shipbuilding or consumer durables. Nevertheless, during recent years, some NICs started producing microchips or computers — industries which are usually labelled as ‘high-tech’. Though high-tech production in Third World locations means, as a rule, assembly activities of transnational corportions (TNCs) or their subcontractors, some countries, namely Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan, and India, today host nationally owned high-tech enterprises.1 Two prerequisites were essential to this development: government policy and technology transfer (TT) from abroad. Typical policy instrument were infant industry protection by tariffs or market reservations, export incentives and promotion of indigenous research and development (R&D). But given the current state of national scientific and technological development, enterprises from these countries had to rely largely on technological know-how acquired from abroad. In view of the conventional wisdom about technological dependency and the willingness of TNCs and certain industrialised countries to transfer state-of-the-art-technology,2 successful technology acquisition was hardly to be expected. Nevertheless, the high-tech development of the four NICs was partly dependent on conventional modes of TT like foreign direct investment or licensing.