17 results
Index
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp 191-200
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List of figures and tables
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp v-vi
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seven - Social cohesion and inclusion
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp 107-134
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Summary
Introduction
Successive waves of technological innovation generate hopes of a ‘social dividend’ and an improved quality of life. The telegraph was welcomed in the 19th century because “technology supports a kinship of humanity” (Scientific American 1881, quoted in Fischer, 1992); some decades later the radio was welcomed, as “making us feel together, think together, live together” (Marvin, 1989). Similar hopes have been raised by the spread of ICT: personal computers, the internet and mobile phones could promote social inclusion, increasing educational and labour market opportunities and enriching social networks.
The “social dividend of technology” has been on the European policy agenda ever since Padraig Flynn, EU Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, established the High Level Group of Experts in May 1995 to examine the social changes associated with the Information Society (Steyaert, 2002). At the same time, policy makers have recognised that technology also produces risks and that innovation carries a fundamental ambiguity:
• “The Information Society promises new digital opportunities for the inclusion of socially disadvantaged people and less-favoured areas. Information and communication technologies have the potential to overcome traditional barriers to mobility and geographic distance, and to distribute more equally knowledge resources.
• On the other hand new risks of ‘digital exclusion’ need to be prevented. In a society increasingly dominated by the usage of information technologies across all sectors, internet access and digital literacy are a must for maintaining employability and adaptability, and for taking economic and social advantage of online contents and services.” (European Commission, 2001c, p 4)
The eEurope initiative aims to ensure that the transition to an information society is socially inclusive, builds trust and strengthens social cohesion. This resonates with the Lisbon Strategy and the Nice European Council (December 2000), which identified e-inclusion as a key objective within efforts to combat poverty and social exclusion. In October 2001 the Council adopted a resolution on e-inclusion (European Commission, 2001c; European Council, 2001). More focused policy statements include the Ministerial Declaration of April 2003 Towards an Inclusive Information Society in Europe (European Council, 2003). A similar set of ambitions in relation to the social benefits of technology can be found in global policy forums, such as the United Nations Development Programme, whose Human Development Report of 2001 carried the subtitle Making new technologies work for human development.
six - Human investment and learning
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp 77-106
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Summary
Introduction
Human investment is central to the new knowledge-based economy. In Chapter 4, for example, we saw that human capital occupies a key role within recent neo-Schumpeterian growth theory; and that sociological models of organisational learning give a central place to ‘communities of practice’ which apply skills of practical creativity. Chapter 5, concerned with organisational change, identified the skills of those working at different levels within an organisation as the necessary complement to ICT investment, business strategy and managerial leadership, in securing the dynamics of innovation.
The new economy generates new requirements for human capital and skills, so that the workforce can deal effectively with technological innovation in ICT and with organisational transformation, both in the economy and in public services. This changes the outputs expected from education and training institutions. At the same time, however, these institutions are themselves exploiting the new technologies and they are developing novel organisational and market strategies, in an effort to shape and to benefit from the opportunities which the new economy affords. Finally, of course, these developments also transform the situation in which individuals and households find themselves: the range of skills that are in demand on the job market, the opportunities for learning and the sources of information, by means of which they can make decisions on education and training, and judge the costs and benefits of those decisions.
These transformations are taking place across a global terrain. While the global diffusion of advances in technology and business processes is nothing new, the pace is accelerating, with education and training services themselves subject to these globalising tendencies. The ICT revolution is one contributing element: there are of course others, notably the political drive for open markets under the auspices of the WTO, including GATS (Knight, 2003). Education and training systems are no longer a secure part of domestic national policy (although national independence of education and training regimes prior to the present century can be exaggerated: see Room, 2002). However, the direction and extent of these pressures of globalisation are not uniform: they are shaped by the specific political economies of the countries and regions involved and the position they occupy within the global distribution of economic and cultural power (for further discussion, see for example Cornford and Pollock, 2003).
eight - Models and measurement
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 07 September 2005, pp 135-142
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Summary
Introduction
In this study we have been concerned with the processes of dynamic change and innovation that seem to characterise the new knowledgebased economy. Chapter 4 developed a conceptual model of the innovation process: the subsequent three chapters applied this model to enterprises, education and training, social cohesion and inclusion.
The conceptual model broke down the innovation process into four stages. We used a taxonomy of readinessi, intensity, impact and outcome indicators, corresponding to these four stages, with different categories of indicators being assigned to different stages of the innovation process. This taxonomy was by no means original. However, like other authors before us, we were then able to look for suitable indicators of readiness, intensity, impact and outcome, paying particular attention to those indicators that are being used by official bodies for tracking the new knowledge-based economy. Those that are being used by the European Union, as part of the Lisbon benchmarking processes, have been of special interest.
In this chapter we take stock of these indicator sets and their adequacy in light of our analysis. It is, however, first necessary to address two difficulties that we have encountered in the course of our investigation, concerned respectively with modelling and measurement.
Models
At first glance at least, the conceptual model of Chapter 4 was a linear model, with innovations proceeding through four stages. In our discussion of the model in that chapter, we took a more nuanced approach: technological and organisation innovation interact; streams of innovation cross-fertilise each other; there are feed-back effects from later stages to earlier; innovations can move along different trajectories, depending upon the national institutional settings in which they are embedded.
As we also stressed in Chapter 4, it would be wrong to imagine that the movement through these four stages is a simple process of technological competition, in which those inventions that are most fit for purpose will necessarily triumph. Hegemonic domination and creative destruction are also involved, as successive waves of innovation reinforce the position of those first able to ride them. This also, however, means that challenges, should they develop, will take the form not of seeking to imitate and undercut existing technologies but of technological (and maybe organisational) innovations that are on a quite different terrain.
Contents
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp iii-iv
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ten - Globalisation and the knowledge economy
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 07 September 2005, pp 151-162
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Summary
Introduction
As we saw in Chapter 1, when setting the context for this study, the development of the new knowledge-based economy is intimately bound up with the process of globalisation (see, for example, Soete, 1999; Togati, 2002). The ICT revolution enables enormously greater speed and accuracy of communication, transcending national boundaries and permitting greatly increased transparency of markets worldwide. These global markets then foster more intense competition, driving technological and organisational innovation and reshaping the global division of labour and welfare. They pose new challenges for the regulation of commerce and the protection of intellectual property rights.
Any attempt to conceptualise and measure the new economy must acknowledge this transformation of the international political economy. This does not mean that processes of globalisation are an outworking of the new economy alone. The challenge is to understand the specific ways in which the new economy and processes of globalisation are interrelated.
Globalisation can be defined as the organisation of economic, social or other activity in terms which transcend – and may even ignore – national boundaries (Dasgupta, 1998; Held et al, 1999; Torres, 2001). It raises questions of governance: how shall this activity be subjected to political scrutiny and direction if the nation state – traditionally the principal mode of governance – can no longer exercise control of this activity by reference to its own boundaries? It also raises questions of information: how can public policy makers provide themselves with the statistical information they require for evidence-based policy, when the instruments which they have inherited for this purpose are still organised principally by reference to national boundaries?
Globalisation is only one element in the reorganisation of space that has been under way in recent decades. For the countries of the EU, the effects of globalisation have to be set alongside those of Europeanisation, including monetary union and the Lisbon process, and the growing importance of the regions, at least in terms of governance. Nevertheless, the principal focus in this final chapter will be upon globalisation and the new economy, with these additional dimensions of spatial reorganisation being addressed only in so far as they are relevant to that discussion.
Endnotes
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- 07 September 2005, pp 163-166
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three - Growth and stability
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp 23-28
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Summary
Policy concerns: the macroeconomy
The US economy enjoyed sustained growth through the 1990s and this, although interrupted during 2001/2 thereafter made some recovery. This was the more remarkable, when set against the performance of Japan and the Eurozone, both becalmed. This was also the period when it seemed that a new economy might be developing, based around the new information technologies. Here also the US was the leader, Japan and the EU the laggards. The implication seemed clear: the new information technologies were driving economic growth, and at an accelerated tempo.
To disentangle the various elements involved in this process, and to measure their respective contributions to economic growth, became a key challenge for national policy makers, seeking to establish where and how to offer support. Should they concentrate on providing fiscal stability and sound macroeconomic management? Or would they need also to intervene to ensure adequate stocks of human capital, an appropriate infrastructure supporting innovation and incentives to entrepreneurship? Questions such as these are at the heart of the major studies of the new economy emanating from the OECD and the US Department of Commerce, as discussed in our opening chapter. The conclusions are fairly clear: fiscal stability and institutions fostering competitive markets are essential and without these, action on other fronts is unlikely to bear fruit.
The stability or instability of the new economy has also been a major concern in public debate. The sustained growth of the US economy suggested that the new economy might provide greater stability of development than did the old; the rise and fall of the ‘dotcoms’ around the turn of the century suggested the contrary (US Department of Commerce, 2002a, ch 2). Nevertheless, as economies recovered, a modest degree of confidence returned (US Department of Commerce, 2003, ch 1).
Meanwhile, the European Union was forging economic and monetary union, with strict rules of fiscal discipline, as laid down in the Stability and Growth Pact. If the new economy had novel characteristics, in terms of growth and stability, this might prove to be of major significance for economic and monetary union. It would be essential to monitor the development of the new economy, and to secure whatever degree of national policy convergence was necessary, in order to support the stability and growth objectives of EMU.
five - Enterprise and organisational change
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- Book:
- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp 49-76
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Summary
Introduction
Our aim is to understand the new knowledge-based economy. However, it is also to identify the major challenges that this economy presents for policy makers and to suggest tools which they might use for monitoring change and for steering social and economic transformation.
Policy makers have hailed the new economy as an engine of dynamism and innovation, productivity growth and competitiveness. Thus, for example, the policy statements developed within the Lisbon process, leading to eEurope 2005, characterise Europe as suffering from a competitiveness gap with the United States and Japan. This is said to arise from an inadequate productivity record, including the use of ICT: “The EU rate of ICT has been gradually rising over the last years from 5.4% of GDP in 1996 to 7.1% of GDP in 2001, almost narrowing the gap with US figures which suffered a marked decline in 2001. However, the increase in ICT spending of the last few years has yet to translate into productivity gains” (European Commission, 2002i). Differences remain in both productivity growth and in levels of investment in ICT, even if within the EU both have been increasing (Jorgensen, 2003a).
Nevertheless, it has long been realised that the connection between ICT investment and productivity is far from simple. Solow's aphorism, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics” (Solow, 1987), suggested that applying computers to organisations structured and managed in traditional terms would not in itself lead to substantial benefits (see Dedrick et al, 2003, for a survey of the debate). Productivity during the 1980s did increase in most parts of the developed world, but apparently by less among the more intensive users of ICT – services – than in the less intensive users, notably manufacturing (Triplett, 1999). Since then, however, the productivity effects of ICT do seem to be showing through, at least in the US economy. The rapid growth of output per capita in the US during the 1990s has been attributed to the use of ICT to effect qualitative improvements in the performance of companies through business process change, integration of supply chains or substantial reduction of inventory (Triplett, 1999).
The European Challenge
- Innovation, Policy Learning and Social Cohesion in the New Knowledge Economy
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005
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Economic and social change is accelerating under the twin impact of globalisation and the new information technologies. This book addresses questions of change with particular reference to the European Union, which has made the development of a socially cohesive, knowledge-based economy its central task for the present decade.
nine - Benchmarking and governance
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- Book:
- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp 143-150
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Summary
Introduction
In Chapter 2 we examined the Lisbon strategy for turning the European Union into “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustaining economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”. At the centre of this strategy were procedures for policy benchmarking among the member states, intended to promote policy convergence and the exchange of best practice but without enlarging the areas of policy which were an EU competence.
We also recognised, however, that within this Lisbon strategy there was a basic ambiguity (see also Room, 2005). The process is in part the offspring of monetary union: as such it seeks to extend similar disciplines to a broader range of policy areas which are important for the attainment of a competitive knowledge-based economy. Growth and stability are therefore key objectives of Lisbon, just as they were of Maastricht. It was by reference to those policy concerns that in Chapter 3 we considered the challenges to conventional economic analysis of growth and stability that are posed by the new economy, and the difficulty in defining appropriate benchmarking indicators.
However, Lisbon also affirmed that in order to develop a knowledgebased economy, the member states of the EU would need to accelerate the transfer of technological and organisational know-how from the best performers to the rest of the Community. Benchmarking provides intelligence about different national experiences, it enriches national debates and it enables political and economic actors on the ground to drive the process of comparison and policy learning, depending on their specific needs and interests. Dynamic learning and innovation are the key objectives. It was by reference to these policy concerns that in Chapters 5 to 7 we sought appropriate benchmarking indicators in relation to enterprises, education and training, access and inclusion.
Of course, it can be cogently argued that these two sets of policy objectives – growth and stability, dynamic learning and innovation – are complements rather than being in conflict. Nevertheless, their emphases are different and so are their implications for the practice of benchmarking. It is likely to be only by appreciating their respective implications that they can be reconciled in practice.
References
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- Book:
- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp 167-190
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one - The new knowledge-based economy
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 07 September 2005, pp 1-10
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Summary
New economy, new society?
The closing decade of the 20th century saw widespread claims of economic and social transformation: centred on the new information technologies, but going way beyond technology in its ramifications. To make sense of this transformation, to evaluate its positive and negative consequences and if possible to steer its development became a central priority of public policy makers. It is with some of these efforts that this book is concerned, with particular reference to the European Union.
Claims that the industrial economy was being overtaken by new economic and social forms were of course nothing new. Nor were the hopes placed in technology, as the means of meeting human needs, reducing the need for toil and creating the conditions for social peace. Alfred Marshall, addressing the Cambridge Reform Club in 1873, posed the question as to whether technical progress would eventually make possible a society where heavy physical toil was eliminated and “every man is a gentleman” (Marshall, 1925). In the 1960s liberal writers such as Kerr and Bell – and, more ambiguously, Galbraith – placed similar hopes in the technological dividend to be enjoyed by the market societies of the West (Kerr, 1964; Galbraith, 1967; Bell, 1974). This would be a post-industrial society, with technical knowledge and information a principal driver of progress and its possession the new basis for social and economic power (Kumar, 1995).
Meanwhile other sociologists debated the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism, as the dominant paradigm of production (Jessop, 1991; Amin, 1994). Since the 1970s, the Fordist paradigm had been beset by dysfunctions between its different levels of organisation: worker resistance to the rigidity of the division of labour; globalisation of economic activity creating problems of national regulation; patterns of consumption which, being more varied, could not be satisfied by mass production. Computer-based technologies would enable the organisational networking and core-periphery reconfiguration that the post-Fordist production paradigm required. The next ‘long wave’ of development would therefore have the new information technologies at its heart: reshaping markets, spawning new industries and revolutionising the management of space and time.
Frontmatter
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp i-ii
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four - Dynamics and innovation
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp 29-48
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Summary
Introduction
The Lisbon Summit recognised that in order to develop a knowledgebased economy, the member states of the EU would need to accelerate the pace of innovation. This would require structural reform but it could also be promoted by pooling best practice and by transferring technological and organisational know-how from the leading international performers. Benchmarking for purposes of policy learning and innovation is therefore at the heart of the Lisbon agenda.
However, innovation performance has been markedly uneven across the EU member states, and even more so at regional level (which will be shaped in part by the national innovation system within which it is embedded: see below and European Commission, 2002b; 2003c). These questions have become yet more pressing with EU enlargement. Several studies have already identified wide discrepancies in the transition economies’ likely capacity for, and responsiveness to, knowledge-based innovation (Piech, 2003; EITO 2004, pp 72-90).
One of our concerns is to identify indicators that policy makers can use to steer and shape these dynamic processes: indicators which may enable the sort of benchmarking for policy learning that Lisbon advocates. Indicators may not be sufficient for such policy learning but they are arguably necessary. We search in particular for indicators which might serve to identify points of leverage – triggers and catalysts – which will send a country or sector along a golden trajectory of socio-economic development (by whomsoever this is defined) or at least steer it away from stagnation and decline.
The risks and opportunities posed by technological advances in the ICT sector arise at least as much from the global as from the national or European economy. As enterprises and other actors develop inventive responses to these technological advances, they draw upon practices and resources internationally, through high tech trade and recruitment of IT specialists in a global market. The indicators which we seek for purposes of benchmarking and policy learning must therefore make reference to national, European and international levels of development.
Mainstream economics does not cope well with the processes of dynamic innovation and cumulative change that would appear to characterise the new knowledge-based economy. The first task of this chapter is therefore to develop a better understanding of the linkages between innovation and macroeconomic processes. This will draw on a wider array of disciplinary traditions, which we draw together in eclectic fashion.
two - The EU response
- Graham Room
- In collaboration with Jacob Dencik, Nick Gould, Richard Kamm, Philip Powell, Jan Steyaert, Richard Vidgen, Adrian Winnett
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- Book:
- The European Challenge
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- Bristol University Press
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- 18 January 2022
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- 07 September 2005, pp 11-22
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Summary
Introduction
The European Union has long been preoccupied with the fear of falling ever further behind the economies of the United States and east Asia. During the 1980s the main barrier to European economic development was seen as being the fragmentation of different national markets: the response was the drive to create a Single Market, a project which was in principle at least to be completed by 1992 (Cecchini, 1988). With a single home market, European enterprises would, it was hoped, be able to operate on a scale to match their American and Japanese rivals. During the 1990s economic and monetary union consolidated the project.
During the late 1990s the focus of attention shifted to the new information technologies and their associated economic transformations. The fear now was that the US would run away with the knowledge-based industries of the new economy, while east Asia – China in particular – would capture the manufacturing industries associated with the old economy. This would leave Europe with a bleak future. Moreover, the globalisation of the economy – the result in part of political initiatives, notably the rise of the WTO, and in part of the rapid communications and 24/7 working which the new technologies have enabled – meant that these challenges from North America and Asia would become more and more pressing. Europe had nowhere to hide. Even the notion that China would concentrate on the old economy, and leave the ‘triad’ of Europe, North America and Japan to divide out the new economy, began to look forlorn (Schaaper, 2004).
Recognising these dangers but also the opportunities, the Lisbon European Summit in March 2000 set a new strategic goal for the Union for the new decade: “to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustaining economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion” (Presidency Conclusions: European Council, 2000b, para 5). This not only asserted the ambition to play a central role in the development of the new knowledge-based industries: it also reaffirmed a long-standing goal of European political economy and – implicitly at least – a critique of the American: to temper the flexibility and insecurity of the market with high quality social protection and an active public policy.