Sociedade, Tecnologia e Inovação Empresarial - Presidente da ...

experience, where there were many false steps along the way, andmany companies failed, at the same time as others succeeded in theeffort. Linsu Kim, and recently myself and Howard Pack, have arguedthat a similar process has been going on in Korea.II. Growing Attention to the Institutional Contextfor Technological AdvanceAs I noted earlier, several of the great classical economists, forexample Smith and Marx, were well aware of the institutional contextwithin which technological advance proceeded, and clearly perceivedhow technological advance in turn influenced the institutionalcontext. Economic historians concerned with technological advance,like David Landes, have been interested in how the institutional structuresin different countries affected the extent to which they led, orlagged, in the development of various technologies. Christopher Freemanoften has considered these questions in the course of his researchand writings. However, I think it fair to say that the last decade hasseen a significant intensification of effort, and advance in knowledge,about the institutional structures supporting technological advance,and about how technological advance requires and often forces changesin institutions.A considerable portion of this research and writings has been concernedwith the nature of the firms that «invent» and «innovate.» Schumpeter’sstatements in his Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy to the effectthat large firms with considerable market power were the source ofmost of technical advance in the mid-twentieth century set off a collectionof empirical work exploring the extent to which that is true.The answer turns out to be that this depends on what industry, ortechnology, one is talking about, and furthermore can change from erato era. There has been considerable attention recently paid to the natureof networks, often involving several firms, and perhaps one or severaluniversities as a source of technological advance. There has been growinginterest in regional structures.Richard Nelson2 6 9Technology, institutions and economic growth