Learning and Technological Change

In this book, fifteen prominent scholars of the economy, business, and technology argue that technical change can fruitfully be interpreted as an institutionally structured learning process. These essays show that the analysis of knowledge-generating institutions - including firms, industries, patenting systems, and occupations - provides important insights into the pace, direction, and persistence of technological change. The authors use these insights to both reshape economic theory and reinterpret the economic development of Britain, the USA, Germany and Japan.

Inhalt
List of Tables and Figures - Acknowledgements - Notes on Contributors - Introduction; R.Thomson - PART 1: APPROACHES AND INSTITUTIONS - Technical Change as Cultural Evolution; R.R.Nelson - Learning and Technological Change: The Perspective from Business History; A.D.Chandler Jr - Nineteenth-century American Patent Management as an Invisible College of Technology; C.C.Cooper - PART 2: DIFFUSION, LEARNING, AND ONGOING TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE - Thinking about Technological Change: Linear and Evolutionary Models; J.K.Smith - Economic Forms of Technological Change; R.Thomson - A Model of the Productivity Gap: Convergence or Divergence?; D.J.Harris - PART 3: COMPETITION AND LEARNING - Innovative Learning and Institutions in the Process of Development: On the Microfoundation of Growth Regimes; F.Chiaromonte, G.Dosi & L.Orsenigo - The Dynamics of Innovation and Diffusion with Competing Techniques; W.Semmler - Learning and the Dynamics of International Competitive Advantage; W.Lazonick - PART 4: TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION - History and Its Lessons; W.N.Parker - Transformational Growth and Learning: Developing Craft Technology into Scientific Mass Production; E.Nell - Borrowing Technology or Innovating: An Exploration of Two Paths to Industrial Development; A.H.Amsden & T.Hikino - EPILOGUE - Institutions, Learning and Technological Change; R.Thomson - Index