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기술혁신세미나

Sectoral patterns of technical change: Towards a taxonomy and a theory

[Keith PAVITT]

기술경영협동과정 박사 4 학기 Yoo, Kwang-yong 2011-09-14 S

p - 기술혁신세미나 1 4 기술경영협동과정 2010313337 유광용 Summary of the paper

Pavitt (1994) proposes 4 types of sectoral pattern for innovative activities. They are based on the characteristics of innovations and of innovating firms, rather than on products and technology of production, as is the case with standard industrial classifications. He uses data collected by Townsend et al. (1981), on the characteristics of about 2000 significant innovations in Britain between 1945 and 1979.

1) Supplier-dominated sectors New technologies come from new components and equipment. These sectors rely on sources of innovation external to the firm. Diffusion usually takes place through learning-by- doing and learning-by-using. Technological trajectories are defined in terms of cutting costs, with suppliers as a source of new technology, mostly in production. Ex. textile, agriculture.

2) Scale- and production-intensive sectors Sources of innovation are both internal (R&D) and external (equipment producers). They are characterized by characterized by medium-level of appropriability obtained through secrecy and patents. They are relatively innovative but with fewer repercussions on other sectors. Ex. automotive sector, means of transport, etc.

3) Specialized production-intensive suppliers Innovation is focused on performance improvement, reliability and custimization. Sources of innovation are both internal (experience of skilled workers) and external (user-producer interaction). There is a high level of appropriability due to the tacit and interactive nature of the knowledge. They are smaller, more specialized firms producing technology to be sold into other firms. Customers are an important trigger for (or source of) product innovation. Ex. specialized machinery production and high-tech instruments.

4) Science-based sectors High-tech firms which rely on R&D from both in-house sources and university research. Firms in this sector develop new products or processes and have a high degree of appropriability from patents, secrecy, and tacit know-how. Ex. pharmaceuticals and electronics.

Main Contribution

Pavitt argued that the sources and purposes of innovation are sector-specific. On the ground of an impressive knowledge of industrial innovation, Pavitt's Taxonomy suggests that firms can be divided into four broad categories: supplier dominated firms, i.e. those firms that acquire their technical expertise from their suppliers, specialized suppliers, especially in the field of equipment and capital goods, which provide the innovations to other firms, scale dominated firms, where the innovation is associated to scale, and science based firms, which innovate through their internal R&D laboratories. Pavitt's Taxonomy has been widely applied in industrial economics and science policy and it is also used for industrial statistics. Therefore, we could understand technology flow between industries and firms with specific view point given by Pavitt. And then, Pavitt had done his assumptions would be supported by statistics method. Empirically, Pavitt’s taxonomy will be great influence to many scholars and professionals who want to know and understand industries and technology based on innovation perspective. Critique

Korea Institute of Intellectual Property | www.kiip.re.kr [email protected] S

p - 기술혁신세미나 1 4 기술경영협동과정 2010313337 유광용 Absolutely, this paper was very innovative and pragmatic material around 1980. But there are several weaknesses in this paper. First of all, definition of innovation had basically ambiguous meaning. Is it really possible obviously separate which case is innovative case or not? According to Pavtt’s expression, when they were faced with uncertainty case, the opinion of experts related with similar industry was critical conclusion that the case was innovation case or not. Based on it, it was not evitable to bias of subjective. Of course, sample size was so huge enough for avoiding somehow bias of collection. But, in this paper, I could not find criterion for choosing experts. Because of it, it is necessary to show up list of experts. Furthermore, if we will use this taxonomy for classification of specific study related with technology innovation used recently data set. Pavitt’s taxonomy is not enough to classify specific industry such as software, intellectual service industries. More sophisticated methodology is useful to categorizing industry. One of them is patent network analysis method which used citation data of patent. Citation would be divided two directions such as forward and backward. Forward citation was more useful to identify technology innovation flow. So, if we use forward citation, it is possible to totally different approach for classifying. In this paper, science-based firms transfer technology to production intensive firms. But, in fact, opposite cases are easily found in real world. Although, supplier dominated firms was only received by technology from science-based firms and scale-intensive firms described in this paper. But perspective of patent, if those firms had good patents even though patent numbers was few. It is possible the supplier dominated firms will be changed to firm which transfer technology to other companies. According to above mentioned, we need to develop and create more suitable components reflected by recent situation.

Korea Institute of Intellectual Property | www.kiip.re.kr [email protected]