Systems Transformation: Technological and Institutional Change: INTRODUCTION

Book chapter, 2013

The chapter by Frieder Meyer-Krahmer is, perhaps, the one that strikes at the most fundamental source of change - alterations in the process of knowledgebuilding itself. Meyer-Krahmer, drawing on other excellent work at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, points to the growing importance of scientific development in the process of innovation - technical change is increasingly subject to ‘scientification’. As significant is the growing economic value of scientific development. Given the significant and increasing role of interdisciplinary basic research, these developments lead to a set of ‘interface’ problems: e.g., between academia and industry (where the latter is more prone to pursue interdisciplinary research), between academia and firms that do not have any activities in basic research, between divisions within firms that need to share their technology base, etc. The adjustment of systems of innovation to this change in the character of knowledge generation has, therefore, implications for both firms and government.