National Innovation Systems: a Retrospective on a Study*
National Innovation Systems: A Retrospective on a Study* RICHARD R. NELSON (School of International and Public Aflkirs, Columbia University, 420 .West 118th' Street, New York, NY 10027, USA) Downloaded from 1. What is the Study About? http://icc.oxfordjournals.org In this essay I will describe a large comparative study of national innovation systems that has just been completed, tell something of what motivated the study and how it was organized and undertaken, and highlight some of the more interesting findings. This is a difficult task, for the project was not only large but also complex. The heart of the project consisted of studies of 15 countries, including all of the prominent large market oriented industrialized ones, several smaller high income countries, and a number of newly industrializing states. The studies were carefully designed, developed, and written to illuminate the at University of Manchester on June 24, 2010 institutions and mechanisms supporting technical innovation in the various countries, the similarities and differences across countries and how these came to be, and to permit at least preliminary discussion of how the differences seemed to matter. No other project has come remotely close to g treating the range of countries considered here. Moreover, many of the individual studies stand as major contributions in their own right to the J *A volume, containing the full study, will be published in the fill of 1992, under the title of N«/»W Imoin Sysltms: A Ctmpertthx Study, by the Oxford University Pros. Funding for the project was ~j provided by the American Enterprise Institute, Columbia University's Center for Japanese Economy and | Business, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and the Sloan Foundation through its support ^ of the Consortium on Competition and Cooperation.
[Show full text]