Technology Development and Application

Since the early 1980s, BRIE had led the way in analyzing competition in the development and use of new technologies and in exploring the impact of new technologies on economic growth. BRIE work treats technology not just as applied science, but as embodied in the know-how, activities, work force of, and relations among, the suppliers, producers, and customers who together shape its evolution.BRIE research has shown how who wins and who loses in the international race to develop and apply technology is dramatically influenced by firm strategies, national policies, and home-market logics.

BRIE research examines competition in technologies that pervasively reshape industrial production throughout the advanced economies. BRIE investigates the possibilities of radical change and discontinuities on changing terms of competition and the evolution of business models in various industries, covering both manufacturing and services. Early BRIE work and publications, such as Manufacturing Matters, American Industry in International Competition, U.S.-Japanese Competition in the Semi-Conductor Industry, focused on international trade in high technology and the role of manufacturing in advanced economies.

Current research examines how digital tools influence production organization, how digitized information alters both how products and services are generated, and the varying links between research, development, and implementation. Core to BRIE research on technologies development and application is the idea that information technology builds tools to manipulate, organize, transmit, and store information in digital form. Information technology amplifies brainpower in a way analogous to that in which the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution's technology of steam engines, metallurgy and giant power tools multiplied muscle power. Information technology builds the most all-purpose tools ever, “tools for thought”. The capabilities created to process and distribute digital data multiply the scale and speed with which thought and information can be applied. And thought and information can be applied to almost everything, almost everywhere. Through publications such as Tools for Thought and Tracking a Transformation, BRIE research influences the way the relationship between technology and industrial production is defined and thought of today.

The very logic of value creation is changing in a digital era. We can see that change in corporate strategies for market segmentation, in the blurring of the line between services and products with products embedding service giving way to services embedding products, in the changed logic of online product and services, and in the reassessment of the character and processes of knowledge management. Likewise, new technologies likewise have powerful implications for how companies are organized and, indeed, how groups of companies collaborate and compete. BRIE research looks at the repercussions of the digital transformation on the institutional foundations of economies, business dynamics, and the evolving organization of work and innovation.

Equally important, we see that the dynamics of innovation are changing. The models we have of the dynamics of innovation processes have to be rethought in the light of global competition and the creation of value in a digital era. How will network infrastructure development and new sources of demand affect the logic of innovation? How will new models of production such as open source software and distributed innovation as production systems affect our understanding of where and how innovation occurs? Traditional notions of clusters suggest that geography matters to innovation, but is that the case in a digital networked world? Moreover, technologies which have been driving innovation are increasingly commoditized as a number of low cost regions become legitimate technology players; indeed the process of creating innovation is itself becoming a commodity. An array of diverse questions from intellectual property and privacy through to competition policy, the shifting nature of product and services, the management of understanding not just of information or vaguely defined knowledge, must be taken together.

Innovation and technology, we now understand, underpins growth in all the advanced countries. Technology, as it evolves and diffuses, will support growth across a broad array of countries. Yet, science and engineering discovery, and the patenting that results from it, are ever more widely spread. Distinctive demand, leading users, are more widely spread. Whether it is Finland or the United States , new challenges clearly suggest that what worked before will not work any longer. BRIE research asks: Where will innovation locate and what will drive its dynamics in the next decade? Who will capture the benefits of innovation? Will there be radical newcomers to the game, or will established players be the winners? It will take several interconnected looks at drivers and issues that will affect the location and dynamics of innovation and R & D. New approaches will be required for a new era.