Reappraises the role of international technology transfer in economic development in light of the globalization of the world economy. Provides an overview and historiography of technology transfer mechanisms, then discusses new technology transfer issues, particularly "sourcing," which have emerged as a result of increasing globalization, leading to an increased understanding of how developing economies and economies in transition could approach technology transfer policy in an increasingly globalized and open economic environment. Radosevich is a research fellow with SPRU, Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Sussex, UK. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

For many years it was assumed that technology transfer would prove an unqualified answer for the problems of the developing nations, vastly simplifying and accelerating their rate of economic development. The papers in this volume question these assumptions demonstrating how technology transfer can be very costly and that success is contingent upon a variety of factors including, the direction of indigienous technology and the political setting of the recipient country.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Innovation is a pivotal driving force behind economic growth. Technological capability deepens and diversifies industrial activity, which fundamentally enhances growth potential. Consequently, failure to build effective technological capability can lead to slow long-term economic growth. This book synthesizes and interprets existing knowledge on technology upgrading failures in order to better understand the challenges of technology upgrading in emerging economies. The objective is to bring together diverse evidence on three major dimensions of technology upgrading: paths of technology upgrading, structural changes in the nature of technology upgrading, and the issues of technology transfer and technology upgrading. Knowledge on these three dimensions is synthesized at the firm, sector, and macro levels across different countries and world macroregions. Compared to the challenges and uncertainties facing emerging economies, our understanding of technology upgrading is sparse, unsystematic, and scattered. The recent growth slowdown in many emerging economies, often known as the middle-income trap, has reinforced the importance of understanding the technology upgrading challenges they experience. While our understanding of these issues from the 1980s and 1990s is relatively more systematised, the more recent changes that took place during the globalization and proliferation of global value chains, and the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, have not been explored and compared synthetically. The current effects of COVID-19, geopolitical struggles, and the growing concern around environmental sustainability add significant complexity to an already problematic situation. The time is ripe to take stock of our existing knowledge on processes of technology upgrading in emerging economies and make further inroads in research on this crucial issue.

Research on the international transfer of technology in economics and management literature has primarily focused on the role of countries and that of companies, in particular multinational enterprises (MNEs). Similarly, economic and business historians have tended to view international technology transfer as a way for economically ‘backward’ countries to acquire new technologies in order to catch up with more developed economies. This volume provides a more in-depth understanding of how the international transfer of technologies is organized and, in particular, challenges the core-periphery model that is still dominant in the extant literature. By looking beyond national systems of innovation, and statistics on foreign trade, patent registration and foreign direct investment, the book sheds more light on the variety of actors involved in the transfer process (including engineers, entrepreneurs, governments, public bodies, firms, etc.) and on how they make use of a broad set of national and international institutions facilitating technology transfer. Put differently, the volume offers a better understanding of the complexity of global technology flows by examining the role and actions of the different actors involved. By bringing together a number of original case studies covering many different countries over the period from the late 19th to the 21st century, the book demonstrates how technology is being transferred through complex processes, involving a variety of actors from several countries using the national and international institutional frameworks.

Technology transfer—the process of sharing and disseminating knowledge, skills, scientific discoveries, production methods, and other innovations among universities, government agencies, private firms, and other institutions—is one of the major challenges of societies operating in the global economy. This volume offers state-of-the-art insights on the dynamics of technology transfer, emerging from the annual meeting of the Technology Transfer Society in 2011 in Augsburg, Germany. It showcases theoretical and empirical analyses from participants across the technology transfer spectrum, representing academic, educational, policymaking, and commercial perspectives. The volume features case studies of industries and institutions in Europe, the United States, and Australasia, explored through a variety of methodological approaches, and providing unique contributions to our understanding of how and why technology transfer is shaped and affected by different institutional settings, with implications for policy and business decision making.

This publication contains three case studies which seek to disseminate information on best practices for promoting transfer of technology in developing countries, in order to help establish new industries which can successfully compete in the global economy. These studies were carried out under the UNCTAD/UNDP Programme on Globalization, Liberalization and Sustainable Human Development, and deal with aircraft manufacturing in Brazil, the pharmaceuticals sector in India and the automobile industry in South Africa.

This book tackles the issue of technological and economic catch-up by examining the role that public research institutions and local policy play in the promotion of this process by fostering local science-technology linkages with incoming foreign-owned multinationals.