The Innovation Process in Industrialized Countries

Abstract

After the rate of technological progress for the overall economy of the USA had been calculated for the first time by Solow¹) in 1957 on the basis of a neoclassical production function, similar calculations followed in quick succession for other countries, and soon even calculations were made relating to individual sectors of industry²). It became quite clear that no automatism exists which ensures technological progress and thereby economic growth. Technological progress just does not come like “manna from heaven”. It became obvious that it is not enough to merely ascertain technological progress by comparing input with output, but that it is important to influence such progress. More important, however, than this reason - born of economists’ gradually widening knowledge - for understanding the introduction of new technologies in industry as a process and for studying it as such was the growing uneasiness felt with regard to the apparent automatism of technological change, oriented solely towards industrial need, and its effects - which are often considered unpleasant and destructive on both society and nature. For this reason, research has increasingly shifted its focus to thoroughly examining the process of technological change, since only thus approaches to a possible guidance of this process can emerge. In so doing, it is not enough to list national differences in the diffusion of new technologies and to search for explanations behind such differences³). Moreover, the question why an innovation process is taking place in one particular enterprise and not in another can only help in part to identify the fact of its taking place.