Abstract
Technological change is widely studied in economic discourse, dominated by an “industrial perspective” in which scientific and engineering advances are categorized by, and analyzed in the context of, industrial classifications. The present study compares this perspective with the alternative approach of studying the effects of scientific advances onproducts (goods and services) in the context of the functions those products serve. Using a function-based classification scheme, data on the economic effects of scientific advances are developed from articles appearing in business journals. These data present a different picture of evolutionary economic change, which may shed additional light on its causality.
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Payson has written primarily on evolutionary economic change.
The opinions expressed in this article are strictly the author’s; they do not reflect any viewpoint or position of the National Science Foundation. The paper was presented at the 1995 Joint Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science and the Society for the History of Technology. I am most indebted to Jennifer Bond (who believed in and supported the research from the very beginning), Kenneth Brown, and Robert Solow for their extensive feedback on earlier work at NSF that helped lead to the current paper. I am also grateful for the thoughtful discussion of the article by Ed Hackett, helpful comments from Steve Fuller and other meeting participants, and reviews of earlier work by Bill Blanpied, Mark Blaug, David Colander, Vincy Fon, Marye Anne Fox, Phillip Griffiths, John Hopcroft, Edwin Mansfield, Cora Marrett, John Moore, Richard Nelson, Alan Rapoport, Larry Rausch, Nathan Rosenberg, Ian Ross, Roland Schmitt, and Al Tupek.
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Payson, S. Product evolution and the classification of business interest in scientific advances. Knowledge and Policy 9, 3–26 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02912434
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02912434