Technological Catching Up

In complex product and systems development strategies, technological catch-up is one of the most important strategies to reduce the technological gap between latecomer countries and technology leaders, in which latecomer countries can reduce their distance from the leaders by imitation, leap and investment. In the last decade, this strategy has been considered by many researchers, but studies show that many of these experiments have failed due to the lack of attention to all the components that affect the technology ecosystem. Due to the complexity of the economic environment, uncertainties and environmental changes, the actions of the factors affecting the ecosystem are different and it is necessary to consider the effect of these factors on the catch-up process. The results of this study show that the occurrence of successful technological catch-up in complex products and systems, requires the development of technological capabilities, adaptation of governance policies at the national level and proper use of the country's comparative advantages. In this research, focusing on technological capabilities and reviewing the literature and field research, using the combined research method, the factors affecting technological catch-up have been identified, analyzed and prioritized. Findings show key factors including technical and infrastructural capabilities, global value chain integration, governance, technological regimes, social capital, accumulation of wealth and financial resources, physical resources and geographical, economic sanctions, market factors and components, and institutionalization, they are effective in the occurrence of technological catch-up in the Iranian petrochemical industry.

همپایی تکنولوژیک یا فناورانه به معنای رسیدن به مرزهای دانش علمی و فنی در زمانی کوتاهتر است. کشورهای در حال  توسعه میبایست با نیت کاهش شکاف موجود در بهره وری یا درآمد خود با کشورهای توسعه یافته بپردازند. ادبیات  نامنسجم همپایی تکنولوژیک، وجود نظریه ها، استراتژی ها، مدل ها و الگوهای گوناگون، نیاز به تحقیقی یکپارچه و دربردارنده تمامی دیدگاه های موجود را بیش از پیش ضروری می سازد. در این مطالعه، پس از مطالعات کتابخانهای، نسبت به گردآوری نظریه ها، استراتژی ها، مدل ها و الگوها و شواهد تجربی(با تمرکز بر تجربه کشورهای آسیایی) مترتب
بر همپایی تکنولوژیک اقدام به عمل آمده است.
واژههای کلیدی: همپایی تکنولوژیک، نظریه ها، استراتژی ها، الگوها، مدلها، عوامل اثرگذار

Among small, late-industrializing economies in the developing world, three – Korea, Taiwan and Singapore – have achieved remarkably rapid industrial and technological catch-up. More interestingly, they have done so by evolving distinctly
different models of national innovation system. This paper presents an analytical framework for characterizing the generic evolutionary paths for rapid technological catch-up by late-industrializing countries. The framework seeks to integrate three
theoretical perspectives: the resource-based view of the firm, the network interaction perspective on the technological learning process, and the institutional economics perspective on the contexts of late-industrialization. The framework is found to be
useful in explaining the divergent evolutionary patterns among these three distinct national innovation systems. The framework also highlights potential limits of the respective innovation systems as the catch-up process reaches an advanced stage, and
suggests new directions for change. Implications for future research on national innovation system for late-industrializing countries are explored.

The debate as to whether, how and under which conditions latecomers in an ever more interconnected global economy can become significant producers of new technology and innovation has significant implications for industrial and economic policy. Technological catch-up can lead to higher productivity, economic growth and an increase in living standards.
Recent contributions in the systems of innovation and evolutionary economics tradition suggest successful latecomers tend to move into new technological or industrial domains that present frequent windows of opportunity, shorter technological cycles, less steep learning curves, and less costly or problematic access to relevant knowledge. We contribute to this debate by building a model that adds new insights on an industry’ knowledge base, to those features of a technological regime that extant studies adopting a sectoral system of innovation (SSI) approach already use to explain catch up. These new insights concern the degree of a knowledge base variety, complexity and decomposability.
We study catch up dynamics in the upstream oil/gas, wind energy and solar energy sectors. Our data cover a thirty-seven-year period from 1980 to 2017. We find that complexity and the regime of appropriability play a particularly important role by interfering with a latecomer’s attempt to catch up with technological leaders within the industry domain. Regarding the impact of a technological cycles length on catch dynamics, it appears to be significant although a nuanced picture emerges in relation to the nature and strength of the relationship.

The aircraft system and its sub-systems, including the engine, are components of complex product systems that highly costly and technology-intensive. The purpose of this research is to provide a general model for explaining the factors affecting the Technological catch up of turbofan engines in Iran - as a complex product system- based on benchmarking the global experiences in this field. The research method in this study is qualitative Meta Synthesis. It was used the library method to collect the data, the Seventh-Step Process of Sandlouki and Barus Meta Synthesis approach to analyze the data and the Panel of Experts to validate and finalize the findings. The research population of the study includes all articles related to the topic of research. To do this, after designing research questions, a systematic search based on the related keywords - technology catch up, complex product systems, commercial turbofan engines – has been done Among the articles published between 1370 and 1397 on scientific databases such as Scopus, SIDs, IRANDOCs, ISCs, IEEEs, Science Direct, and also with the help of the Elmnet and Google scholar search engines.
By reviewing 31 articles from 172 primary articles, researchers identified 11 dimensions and 92 components as key factors affecting the technological catch up of commercial turbofan engines. Based on these factors, a comprehensive framework for the technological catch up of turbofan engines in Iran has been presented and validated.

This study evaluates technological catch-up in the electronics industry by Chinese indigenous firms compared with foreign firms operating in the country. We make use of firm-level data for the period 2001–2012, a period during which the Chinese government encouraged engagement with foreign partners and entry into the global supply chain in hopes of fostering technology transfer. We apply data envelope analysis to estimate group technology frontiers for private, state, and foreign firms, and decompose total factor productivity growth into technological change and technical efficiency change. The picture that emerges is one of mixed success. Indigenous firms on the cutting edge have pushed their group productivity frontier outward at a rapid pace even as the broad mass of indigenous firms has slipped further inside this expanding frontier. For private firms as a whole, the strongest period for technological catch-up was the mid-2000s, with progress relative to the foreign standard slowing again after that. Achievement has been greatest in sub-industries at the lower end of the technological ladder (e.g., appliances) and less notable at the upper end (e.g., computers). Evidence of a contribution by research and development and by worker training is found only beyond a cumulative threshold and for firms advantaged by location or joint venture partnership.

For several decades, China tried to catch up in the automotive industry, yet until recently with little success. Now, the paradigm shift from internal combustion to electric driving has been used to catch up with global competitors. The Chinese government provided a strong policy push to become lead market, and increasingly also lead manufacturer. This paper combines the analysis of patent data and qualitative analysis of subsector trends to assess the Chinese industries international competitiveness. We find that the country is indeed leapfrogging ahead in some domains (electric buses, lithium batteries) and rapidly catching up in others, including passenger vehicles. Ambitious green transformation policies can thus spur competitiveness.

The idea of leapfrogging, where a newly industrialising nation moves directly to the use of advanced technologies without needing to follow the trajectory of its predecessors, is an attractive one, particularly for the automobile industry where there is an urgent need to develop more sustainable technologies. China now has the highest level of automobile production and sales in the world; thus, the question we address in this article is, can China 'leapfrog' to the development of clean and economically viable electric vehicles? The existing literature on leapfrogging is ambiguous and ill defined; we review the literature and identify four generic patterns for leapfrogging. We then present some empirical data on the factors that might influence China's ability to leapfrog to electric vehicles. We conclude with an evaluation of the likelihood of it actually being able to do so and propose three leapfrogging scenarios that it might follow.

This article investigates the relationship between the dynamics of knowledge base complexity and shifts in the international geography of innovation, with important implications for the process of technological catch-up. Empirical evidence from the upstream petroleum industry is used to explain why some catching-up countries are taking advantage of emerging technological opportunities, whereas others cannot close the technological gap. Building on the work of Maleki et al (2015), we propose that the dynamics of knowledge base complexity contribute to explain shifting geographical patterns of innovation and catching-up processes, provided that a crucial distinction is made between breadth and systemic complexity. Breadth complexity creates opportunities for catching-up countries and favours geographical dispersion, while increasing systemic complexity has opposite effects. Consistent with Cantwell's (1995) theory of globalisation of technological development, our results suggest that in dealing with systemic complexity, the cognitive and organizational proximity available within the internal networks of big multinational companies may be more important than geographical proximity.

The debate over the impact of education on economic growth has recently led to disagreement when, at the empirical level, the effect of average human capital on economic growth has been found to be weak. With this paper we revisit these results by arguing how different educational attainment levels (rather than the average human capital stock) impact heterogenously different regions’economic performance. We build and test a catch-up model where technology adoption takes place as a function of each region’s human capital composition. We show for 50 NUTS3 Spanish provinces in between 1965 and 1997, how convergence to the frontier is driven by higher education and, to a lesser extent, by vocational training. Both theoretical and empirical results are alternative to the well known formalization proposed by Vandenbussche, Aghion and Meghir (2005). Severe endogeneity issues, as well as small sample biases, are tackled by using system GMM estimators and the correction proposed by Windmeijer (2005).

Public intervention to support knowledge generation is recognized as a fundamental strategy that enables the closing the gap between latecomers and forerunners economies. Evaluations and academic studies have been conducted on a wide variety of interventions and rapidly
expanded what is known about these policies instruments. However, much of the evidence report conflicting results and can lead to misunderstandings about the potential of these interventions. This article offers a systematic review and a critical discussion of what the
literature has to say about the effectiveness of these instruments. It is argued that learning about the effectiveness of interventions requires a capacity to seize and interpret its effects. Specifically, two critical factors are emphasized to understand the potential of these policies, which are their sequence of implementation and the context-dependence of interventions. Since none of these issues has been investigated in-depth, some aspects are discussed to guide future evaluations.

This paper highlights the specificities of the patterns of low carbon energy technological innovations in selected Asian emerging economies. China and the members of ASEAN-4 (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines) are included in this analysis for their identical structure of developing economy. We outline a synthetic framework to cluster together the technologies with similar characteristics and analyse the changes of these characteristics over time. This is in order to elucidate the scope of sectoral composition and specialisation of the selected economies, and thereby understand the relative impact of science-based low carbon energy technologies on the niches of technological excellence. The findings show that China was keen to pursue its diversification strategy and develop its capability in low carbon energy technologies since the turn of the millennium. However, China has been gradually losing its momentum in more traditional areas like biomass, hydroelectric power, natural gas and fossil fuels. The ASEAN-4 economies, on the other hand, are showing interest in building a number of niches of technological excellence. This highlights a contrasting relative technological advantage between larger and smaller economies. Our findings also indicate that many of the low carbon technologies in selected economies have yet to attain strong scientific grounding for development. The findings of this paper are expected to provide some insights into low carbon energy technological development of emerging economies, and be useful for other developing economies to establish their strategic moves for energy technology development.