We have covered a great deal of ground in this volume, beginning with the origins of industrial exploitation of scientific research in the midnineteenth century and moving forward to discuss problems of international competition among advanced industrial economies in the late twentieth century. This chapter does not present “lessons” or policy implications of this wide-ranging analysis, but draws together some of the threads of the arguments we have presented in preceding chapters.

Although our span has been wide, we have been concerned throughout this volume with the changing structure of national R&D systems and of industrial research, focusing on the ways in which the structural evolution of these systems is influenced by the requirements of absorption and utilization of scientific and technological research results. The appropriability analysis of research investment and innovation developed within neoclassical economics is useful but incomplete for analyzing the development and structure of the institutions of technological progress and for the development of science and technology policies.

Exploiting the results of scientific and technological research is a complex, costly, and knowledge-intensive process. As we noted in our discussion of the emergence of industrial research laboratories in the United States, the large resource requirements and complexity of this process go some considerable distance toward explaining the structure of the industrial research system within this economy. Moreover, this and other evidence (cited in Chapter 5 and in Mowery, 1983) suggest that cooperative research programs alone are insufficient to transform the innovative performance of technically backward industries and firms; more is needed, specifically the development of sufficient expertise within these firms to utilize the results of externally performed research. Where such expertise is lacking, cooperative research organizations often have been unsuccessful in industry.