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

nomic aims appeared increasingly to become overtaken in purposeand speed of implementation by the broader world wide integrationprocess.Underlying many of these major structural transformations, sometimescausing them, sometimes enabling them, there was and continuousto be the rapid rate of technological change in information andcommunication technologies. Three specific features of these technologieshave been instrumental in bringing about further structuraltransformations in the economic, social and organisational frameworkof society opening up an increasing number of sectors to internationaltrade and restructuring. First, the dramatic reduction in the costs ofinformation and communication processing; second, the technologically,driven «digital convergence» between communication and computertechnology; and third, the rapid growth in international electronicnetworking. These features affect all aspects of society. For one theydo not limit themselves to the manufacturing and distribution of goodsand services, even though the economic transformation they are bringingabout might be most visible. They primarily affect communicationbetween individuals, between organisations whether they are formallystructured as in the case of firms or consist of informal, virtually organised«communities», and of course and increasingly so between individualsand machines.In this paper, the focus is on the fundamental transformations, thesenew information and communication technologies have brought aboutin the production, distribution and organisation of research activitiesand knowledge more generally. The claim made here is that these transformationsare behind the relative economic success of the United Statesover the nineties and that Europe’s failure to address these, is a majorfactor behind the widespread gap which emerged between Europeanand American economic and research performance. In a first section,the size of this gap is illustrated on the basis of a couple of simpleaggregate indicators. A number of recent documents, including therecent Communication «Towards a European research area» from CommissionerBusquin, go in more depth into the nature and size of theresearch gap.Luc Soete2 8 1Europe and national technology policies…