Abstract
National Systems of Innovation systems can be defined as the set of organisational, institutional and meta-institutional arrangements for the generation, diffusion and application of scientific and technological knowledge operating in a specific country. This concept was developed in the late 1980s, and has diffused remarkably fast in academic circles and
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among policy makers who used its framework to understand differences between economies and the various ways to support technological change and innovation. The concept's focus on the nation state is its strength but also its weakness. The national perspective easily neglects sector-specific differences. The dynamics of the agricultural sector are distinctively different from those in the telecommunication sector. That is why Herman Oosterwijk has proposed to extend the national perspective with sectoral elements in a national-sectoral approach.
The starting point for his analysis is that interaction is the vehicle for innovative activities. Social and economical actors organise their working relations in sector-specific ways and these relations are embedded in an institutional environment. Each sector has its own, distinct patterns for rules and regulation, for research funding and for the generation and diffusion of knowledge. Innovative activities should therefor be explored within the social fabric in which they are embedded.
Oosterwijk's study is a historical analysis of working relations and interactions in the telecommunication and the biotech sector. The roots of telecommunication are relatively easy to trace, starting with the introduction of telegraphy and telephony at the end of the 19th century. Tracing back the roots of biotech was harder, because the word 'biotechnology' was only used for the first time in the 1920s. Oosterwijk chose to concentrate on the agriculture, food and chemistry cluster as the most important predecessors of modern biotechnology.
What he found were persistent patterns of social behaviour throughout the twentieth century. The telecommunication sector was a highly regulated sector, with only few actors, which were linked to each other in a monopoly like structure. The sector was outspokenly inner-oriented. Problems were basically seen as technical problems and solutions were sought in the hierarchy of the firm, whether PTT/KPN or the national telecommunication industry. Links between firms were often stronger than links within the firm. The agriculture, food and chemistry cluster had a distinctively different profile. This cluster was deeply embedded in societal structures, with numerous links to the local community, research and education institutes, politics and regulation systems. Problems were basically solved in networks, with the utmost use of skills, technologies and partnerships. This type of networking has its origins in the classical agricultural co-operatives.
These patterns remained hardly unchanged throughout the century. Even important changes of the technological paradigm have not been able to radically change the pattern. The liberalisation and privatisation of the telecommunication sector may have changed the structure of the sector, but currently the pendulum is already swinging back again towards a highly concentrated sector, with only few actors and monopoly-like structures.
This underlines that economical sectors have their own sectoral-specific structures, which are not fully captured in a national approach in innovation research. A national-sectoral approach offers a much better toolbox for the analysis of innovation systems and the development of effective innovation policy tools.
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