This paper explores the potential of renewable energy technologies and smart grids to drive a transformative shift in the energy landscape. Drawing inspira-tion from the concept of technological revolutions, the paper examines histor-ical examples of techno-economic paradigms and their reliance on abundant and low-cost energy resources. It highlights the current emergence of low-carbon energy generation technologies, such as wind, solar, and hydropower, and their integration into the digital technoeconomic paradigm. The paper emphasizes the co-evolution of green and digital transition processes and their potential to create diversified energy networks. It investigates the connections between technological revolutions, renewable energy sources, and smart grids, suggesting that these elements will shape the future energy transition

This chapter is about radical innovation and disruptive technological change. Discovering the nature and mechanisms of disruptive technological change can help to understand the long-run dynamics of innovation and map profound transformation in socio-economic systems. The chapter considers four concepts essential for the understanding radical and disruptive technological change: long waves, techno-economic paradigms, general purpose technologies, and disruptive technologies. We conclude with some insights on the emerging technologies in the latest techno-economic paradigm. The tools and concepts given here remain the cornerstone of a useful theory of innovation and change even in our current complex socio-technical landscape.

This lecture discusses technological revolutions and techno-economic paradigms, but with an emphasis on the digital revolution and the digitalization of the economic and society. It draws its inspiration from works of Joseph Schumpeter, Christopher Freeman, and Carlota Perez on long waves of technological development and places the story within the context of global innovation networks. The lecture contends that the digital revolution not only transformed the world we live in but also created new ways to organize networks within it. We are now in second half of the digital (fifth technological) revolution, when the digitalization of the global networked economy prevails, and not at the beginning of Industrie 4.0. On the contrary, this is the period when economic growth drives the use of innovative digital technologies, including ubiquitous computing, robotics, and artificial intelligence, toward a truly digitalized network society.

Technology upgrading is essential for emerging countries to catch up. Yet, little is known about how countries are upgrading their technologies. In this paper, we first explore the patterns of biotechnology upgrading in China and examine the specialization feature from both technological and organizational perspectives. Our results show that China has specialized in the industrial-biotech sub-field, and firms have played a key role in the development of biotech in this field. Secondly, we investigate the knowledge bases for technology upgrading. From the perspective of scientific knowledge bases, we find that there is a scientific backup for biotechnology; and that biotechnology goes hand in hand with bioscience. From the perspective of technical knowledge bases, by disaggregating the knowledge sources by countries, we find that local knowledge has become an increasingly important resource for the development of new biotechnologies in China. The increasing importance of local knowledge in the development of new biotechnologies shows that China is moving on a path from imitative to indigenous innovation.

Empirical analyses of knowledge spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) offer mixed results; they find positive, neutral and negative FDI spillover effects. This lack of evidence mainly comes from the results of firm-level panel data analysis. This is important since this approach seems to be the most appropriate for estimating FDI spillovers. The paper takes a look at recent substantive and methodological developments in FDI spillover analysis, which have brought some more optimistic results with regard to FDI spillovers, and can help in further development in this field. The main substantive development relates to the introduction of a broad variety of sources of firm heterogeneity (foreign affiliates as well as local firms) in the analysis. Others include differentiation between vertical (inter-industry) and horizontal (intra-industry) spillovers, and host country absorptive capacity for knowledge spillovers. Methodological developments relate to distinguishing between technological/knowledge and productivity spillovers, improvement of modelling and estimation methods, and an increased amount and quality of data.

Georg Friedrich List provided the economic rationale for infant industry protection and export subsidies. In doing so, he also offered a convincing story about how international trade, accumulation, and uneven development were related to the twin issues of technical change and technological learning. This chapter pulls together those aspects of List's analysis that relate to the American system of political economy, as he would have experienced it after settling in the United States in 1825, and as it unfolded in the two centuries that followed. It considers the cosmopolitan ideal in enlightenment thought and contrasts this ideal with political economy. The chapter also considers the importance of intellectual capital and technological learning in Adam Smith and Friedrich List. Changes in the techno-economic paradigm and new technology systems are then described from the origin of the American system of innovation to the present day.

Hyman Minsky pioneered the idea of the financial instability hypothesis to explain how swings between robustness and fragility in financial markets generate business cycles in the economic system. Yet few economists have recognized that this elemental idea originates not only from the financial theory of investment and investment theory of business cycles put forward by John Maynard Keynes, but also in the credit view of money and finance advocated by Joseph Schumpeter. Nevertheless, Minsky described Schumpeter's business cycle theory as 'banal' because it relied on the real economy as Walras represents. The reason was that money was endogenous in Schumpeter's earlier view, as it emerged out of the credit system, which allowed for a discussion of the relationship between production and finance. This essay will focus on how Minsky related some ideas from Schumpeter's Theory of Economic Development with those in Keynes' General Theory Money and finance provide a link between Keynes' view of the investment decision as a determinant of output and employment with Schumpeter's view of the investment decision as a determinant of innovation and economic growth.

Oil and gas provided the cheap energy source for the era of mass production and consumption and the first half of the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution. However, increasing scarcity and the addition of carbon pollution taxes are making this source of energy more costly, while economies of scale, the Internet and the use of microprocessors are making multi-source renewable energy networks an attractive alternative. How might the emergence of low-carbon energy generation technologies, such as solar photovoltaic fit into the current techno-economic paradigm? This article explores some of the possibilities and anticipates how the ICT revolution might unfold over the next decades.

This paper presents a comparative study of the importance of direct technology transfer and spillovers through FDI on a set of ten transition countries, using a common methodology and appropriate methods to account for selection and simultaneity correction. This paper considers by far the largest firm level dataset (more than 90,000 firms) used by any study on the spillover effects of FDI. The main novelty of the paper is the explicit control for various sources of firm heterogeneity when accounting for different effects of FDI on firm performance. Controlling for these variables leads to some interesting results which contrast with the previous empirical work in the field. We find that horizontal spillovers have become increasingly important over the last decade, and they may even become more important than vertical spillovers. Furthermore, this work shows that the heterogeneity of firms in terms of absorptive capacity, size, productivity and technology levels affect the results. These findings suggest that both direct effects from foreign ownership as well as the spillovers from foreign firms substantially depend on the absorptive capacity and productivity level of individual firms. Only more productive firms and firms with higher absorptive capacities are able to both compete with foreign affiliates in the same sector and benefit from the increased upstream demand for intermediates generated by foreign affiliates. In addition, these results show that foreign presence may also affect smaller firms to a larger extent than larger firms, but this impact may be in either direction.

The share of knowledge-intensive services and products in total output and demand and in the production of advanced, but also less advanced or emerging economies, has steadily increased over time and especially so for the knowledge-intensive services. This ‘quaternization’ of the economies not only points towards the rising shares of services but also stresses the role of knowledge-intensive services and their growing importance as sources of innovation and technology and as inputs into the manufacturing process. First the study documents the important role played by services in the EU as compared to the USA and Japan. Special emphasis is given to the role of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). The study then stresses the role of service output of manufacturing firms, a phenomenon also termed ‘convergence process’ which so far has not received much attention in the existing literature. Further it analyses the role of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) with respect to their role of embodied knowledge flows and linkages between KIBS and manufacturing sectors, underpinning that services have been playing an increasing role in boosting the productivity of manufacturing sectors. Finally, the study focuses on the importance of trade in knowledge-intensive manufacturing and services (overall and KIBS in particular) regarding the competitiveness of the EU with respect to trade in services in general and trade in knowledge-intensive business services in particular.

In this paper, we pose (but do not attempt to answer) a number of questions about changes in the economic environment and ask whether earlier cyclical analyses are still adequate. Although there are many similarities in patterns observed in earlier cycles and those that are found at present, there have also been significant deviations since the 1970s. We ask, for example, whether the multiplication in the number of economic nodes to include increasing numbers of Asian and Latin American nations will lead to a greater diversity of growth patterns that could dampen cyclical activities when viewed from a global perspective. A second issue that we address is the increasing dominance of service activities and the corresponding diminution in the role of manufacturing in modern economies. Will this lead to changes in the timing of cyclical events both within national economies and internationally and, if so, what form will the changes take? Finally, we raise the issue of the rate and extent of the spread of scientific and technological knowledge in recent decades and ask if the increasing diffusion that we detect will lead to a proliferation in the number of national economies that can exert important influence on cycles.

One of the major driving forces, if not the major driving force, behind nanotechnology is economics. The argument that nanotechnology will radically alter the world as we know it is often made by people who stand to profit from the changes. They expect that there will be new winners and losers, and they are trying to be among the winners. In this chapter, Mark Knell reviews the thinking of evolutionary economists on the relationship between economic inequalities and long waves of technological change. According to this line of thought, when a revolutionary new technology is first introduced it disrupts social relationships, including the institutions developed under the old technological regime for redistribution of wealth to reduce inequality Until new institutions are developed that match the new regime, inequality increases. If nanotechnology actually represents a sixth technological revolution-and Knell leaves this question open-societies will have to invent new forms of redistribution to accompany it.-eds.

This paper considers the measurement of the direct and indirect flows of knowledge between different technology-intensive industries in France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. Using the OECD Input–Output database and the ANBERD database, we show that product-embodied knowledge accounts for about half of total technology use, on average, but with a substantial variation between industries. We then develop a general two-sector linkage measure that allows us to examine the interaction between predominantly technology producing industries (generally high-tech) and predominantly technology using industries (generally low-tech). This study shows that the medium-high and medium-low tech industries, identified as specialized-supplier and scale-intensive industries, including knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), are essential for the production, diffusion and use of technology, and hence for economic growth.

Ligand protonation and stepwise dissociation constants, formation constants and speciation of four pyridyl sulfonamide ligands (Congreeve et al., New J. Chem. 27:98–106, 2003) were assessed, using potentiometric and UV/Visible spectrophotometric pH titrations (in 80% MeOH − 20% H2O). The suitability of these ligands as Cu(II) and Zn(II) sensors for physiological applications was assessed. Two ligands L1 and L4 were p-toluenesulfonamide derivatives while L2 and L3 were triflurosulfonamide derivatives. Additionally L3 and L4 were appended with α-methyl groups. The most stable complex was formed by L1 with Cu(II) owing to the fact that this complex was square planar (log 10  K 1=12.15±0.004 and log 10  β 2=15.42±0.006). The rest of the complexes invariably formed distorted tetrahedron geometry and complexation was weaker. Speciation diagrams show the effect of ligand to metal concentration, revealing that the L2 and L3 ligands are the most suitable for forming ML2 complexes at physiological pH.

Innovation has its most important impact on the economy through the diffusion of new technical knowledge, from its first worldwide implementation in the production of goods and services to its adoption and adaptation by enterprises located in different places across the globe. One way to identify whether an enterprise creates new knowledge or uses already existing knowledge is to measure the novelty of the innovation in various markets, namely whether the innovation is new to the world, country and local market, or only to the enterprise. While innovation new to the enterprise may be only capturing the ability of an enterprise to use and adopt new knowledge, it is also a precondition for economic growth and development. Pooling information from the Third Community Innovation Survey carried out in thirteen European countries, including several countries significantly behind the European average per capita income, we estimate an ordered probit model that relates the novelty of product innovation to structure, strategy and capabilities of enterprises. The study shows that research and marketing capabilities boost the outcome most in the frontier countries, while process upgrading and foreign ownership make much more difference in catching-up countries. This illustrates how the nature of the innovation process changes with the increasing distance from the technology frontier.

Innovation has its most important impact on the economy through the diffusion of new technical knowledge, from its first worldwide implementation in the production of goods and services to its adoption and adaptation by enterprises located in different places across the globe. One way to identify whether an enterprise creates new knowledge or uses already existing knowledge is to measure the novelty of the innovation in various markets, namely whether the innovation is new to the world, country and local market, or only to the enterprise. While innovation new to the enterprise may be only capturing the ability of an enterprise to use and adopt new knowledge, it is also a precondition for economic growth and development. Pooling information from the Third Community Innovation Survey carried out in thirteen European countries, including several countries significantly behind the European average per capita income, we estimate an ordered probit model that relates the novelty of product innovation to structure, strategy and capabilities of enterprises. The study shows that research and marketing capabilities boost the outcome most in the frontier countries, while process upgrading and foreign ownership make much more difference in catching-up countries. This illustrates how the nature of the innovation process changes with the increasing distance from the technology frontier.

The key message of this book is that heterogeneity should be seen as an intrinsic and indispensable element of knowledge systems. The authors address the concept of heterogeneity in a multi-disciplinary fashion, including perspectives from evolutionary economics and innovation system studies, and relate this approach to existing theories in a broad range of fields.

Why do some countries perform much better than other countries? This paper outlines a synthetic framework, based on Schumpeterian logic, for analyzing this question. Four different aspects of competitiveness are identified: technology, capacity, demand, and price. The contribution of the paper is particularly to highlight the three first aspects, which often tend to be ignored due to measurement problems. The empirical analysis, based on a sample of 90 countries on different levels of development during 1980–2002, demonstrated the relevance of technology, capacity, and demand competitiveness for growth and development. Price competitiveness seems generally to be of lesser importance.