IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tth/wpaper/35.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Where do Innovations Come From? Transformations in the U.S. Economy, 1970-2006

Author

Listed:
  • Fred Block
  • Matthew R. Keller

Abstract

This article brings to bear new data on the issue of structuring national innovation systems. Drawing on a unique data set of prize winning innovations between 1971 and 2006, we document three key changes in the U.S. economy. The first is an expanding role of interorganizational collaborations in producing award winning innovations. The second is the diminishing role of the largest corporations as sources of innovation. The third is the expanded role of public institutions and public funding in the innovation process. This leads us to the surprising conclusion that the U.S. increasingly resembles a Developmental Network State in which government initiatives are critical in overcoming network failures and in providing critical funding for the innovation process. The paper concludes by addressing the implications of these finding for debates over the appropriate regime for intellectual property rights.

Suggested Citation

  • Fred Block & Matthew R. Keller, 2011. "Where do Innovations Come From? Transformations in the U.S. Economy, 1970-2006," The Other Canon Foundation and Tallinn University of Technology Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics 35, TUT Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance.
    • Handle: RePEc:tth:wpaper:35
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hum.ttu.ee/wp/paper35.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Taylor, Mark Zachary, 2004. "Empirical Evidence Against Varieties of Capitalism's Theory of Technological Innovation," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 601-631, July.
    2. Gregory Tassey, 2007. "The Technology Imperative," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 4229.
    3. David C. Mowery, 2009. "Plus ca change," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 18(1), pages 1-50, February.
    4. Whitford, Josh, 2005. "The New Old Economy: Networks, Institutions, and the Organizational Transformation of American Manufacturing," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199286010.
    5. Jaffe, Adam B & Lerner, Josh, 2001. "Reinventing Public R&D: Patent Policy and the Commercialization of National Laboratory Technologies," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(1), pages 167-198, Spring.
    6. Mirowski, Philip & Sent, Esther-Mirjam (ed.), 2002. "Science Bought and Sold," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226538563, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schuelke-Leech, Beth-Anne, 2018. "A model for understanding the orders of magnitude of disruptive technologies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 261-274.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jason M. Rathje & Riitta Katila, 2021. "Enabling Technologies and the Role of Private Firms: A Machine Learning Matching Analysis," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 5-21, March.
    2. Duan, Yunlong & Liu, Shuling & Cheng, Hao & Chin, Tachia & Luo, Xuan, 2021. "The moderating effect of absorptive capacity on transnational knowledge spillover and the innovation quality of high-tech industries in host countries: Evidence from the Chinese manufacturing industry," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 233(C).
    3. Link, Albert N. & Siegel, Donald S. & Van Fleet, David D., 2011. "Public science and public innovation: Assessing the relationship between patenting at U.S. National Laboratories and the Bayh-Dole Act," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(8), pages 1094-1099, October.
    4. Pietro Moncada-Paternò-Castello, 2022. "Top R&D investors, structural change and the R&D growth performance of young and old firms," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 12(1), pages 1-33, March.
    5. David B. Audretsch & Taylor Aldridge & Alexander Oettl, 2006. "The Knowledge Filter and Economic Growth: The Role of Scientist Entrepreneurship," Papers on Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy 2006-11, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy Group.
    6. Nicholas Bloom & John Van Reenen & Heidi Williams, 2019. "A toolkit of policies to promote innovation," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 10.
    7. Yang, Hyeonchae & Jung, Woo-Sung, 2016. "Structural efficiency to manipulate public research institution networks," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 21-32.
    8. Gregory Tassey, 2007. "Tax incentives for innovation: time to restructure the R&E tax credit," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 32(6), pages 605-615, December.
    9. Ajay Bhaskarabhatla & Enrico Pennings, 2012. "Defensive Disclosure under Antitrust Enforcement," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 12-010/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    10. Malik, Tariq H., 2017. "Varieties of capitalism, innovation performance and the transformation of science into exported products: A panel analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 324-333.
    11. Tylecote, Andrew, 2019. "Biotechnology as a new techno-economic paradigm that will help drive the world economy and mitigate climate change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 858-868.
    12. Attila Havas, 2016. "Social and Business Innovations: Are Common Measurement Approaches Possible?," Foresight-Russia Форсайт, CyberLeninka;Федеральное государственное автономное образовательное учреждение высшего образования «Национальный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики», vol. 10(2 (eng)), pages 58-80.
    13. Mario Coccia, 2017. "The relation between typologies of executive and technological performances of nations," IRCrES Working Paper 201701, CNR-IRCrES Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth - Moncalieri (TO) ITALY - former Institute for Economic Research on Firms and Growth - Torino (TO) ITALY.
    14. Henry Wai-chung Yeung & Neil M. Coe, 2015. "Toward a Dynamic Theory of Global Production Networks," Economic Geography, Clark University, vol. 91(1), pages 29-58, January.
    15. Fuchs, Erica R.H., 2010. "Rethinking the role of the state in technology development: DARPA and the case for embedded network governance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 1133-1147, November.
    16. Stefan Ćetković & Aron Buzogány & Miranda Schreurs, 2016. "Varieties of clean energy transitions in Europe: Political-economic foundations of onshore and offshore wind development," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-18, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    17. DiVito, Lori, 2012. "Institutional entrepreneurship in constructing alternative paths: A comparison of biotech hybrids," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 884-896.
    18. Lechowski, Grzegorz, 2019. "Beyond "dependent development" in a high-tech industry? The interplay between domestic institutions and transnational sectoral governance in the trajectories of emerging Polish IT firms [," Discussion Papers, Research Group Globalization, Work, and Production SP III 2018-302r, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, revised 2019.
    19. Reale, Filippo, 2019. "Governing innovation systems: A Parsonian social systems perspective," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    20. Marco R. Di Tommaso & Stuart O. Schweitzer, 2013. "Industrial Policy in America," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13749.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tth:wpaper:35. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Shobhit Shakya (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ahittee.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.