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ItemEmerging Technologies and Inequalities: Beyond the Technological Transition(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-07) Cozzens, Susan E.The innovation systems approach to societal development includes a critique of the common focus on high technologies in the development process. Even in affluent economies, directing resources exclusively to high technologies neglects the broader innovative processes undertaken by doing, using, and interacting. In developing economies, with fewer resources, too strong a focus on high technologies is unlikely to produce as much benefit as a more inclusive concept of innovation. Emerging technologies are defined as those that are new, science-based, and of potentially broad impact (Cozzens et al., forthcoming). They are a particular subset of high technologies, located at what some call the technological frontier. Affluent countries compete for leadership in emerging technologies like bio- and nano-technologies, and some less affluent countries have in the past found significant opportunities in the wide open spaces of the technology emergence process. This paper looks at five examples of emerging technologies from the viewpoint of several developing countries, with particular attention to their distributional consequences. None of the examples represents the kind of dramatic opportunities that get so much attention in the innovation studies literature – there are no Koreas, Taiwans, or Singapores here. Precisely because of this, these cases may be more representative of the dilemmas emerging technologies present for countries that are trying to achieve inclusive growth. The paper presents some of the results from a cross-national, cross-technology study of the distributional effects of emerging technologies. The five technologies studied were: genetically modified (GM) maize, mobile phones, open source software, plant tissue culture, and recombinant insulin. The eight countries included were: Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, Jamaica, Malta, Mozambique, and the United States. Half are high-income and half are low or middle income countries. This paper focuses on the results of the study in the four low and middle income countries. Emerging technologies are a strategic research site for examining the interaction of inequalities between countries and inequalities within countries.2 Conceptually, we defined emerging technologies in this project as new and research-based, with potential broad impact. Operationally in the project, we have studied the actual distributional consequences of selected biotechnologies and information and communication technologies (ICTs). The research aims to 1. describe the dynamics that link emerging technologies to patterns of inequality; 2. identify the roles of public interventions in those dynamics; and 3. develop a framework that policy actors can use prospectively to analyze the distributional valence of a specific new technology in a particular national context. Our central research question is how policy interventions affect distributional outcomes for the same technology under different national conditions.
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ItemWho collaborates internationally in developing countries? The case of Colombia(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-07) Ordóñez-Matamoros, Gonzalo ; Cozzens, Susan E. ; García-Luque, MargaritaInternational research collaboration is a growing social phenomenon taking place at a particularly rapid pace in developing countries. Most of the literature on the topic claims that research collaboration is an important source of creativity, which in the right set of conditions may increase scientific productivity, research quality, innovative capacity, science and technology human capital, and help the consolidation of research agendas and the expansion of research areas. However, risks and costs associated with international collaboration are also found in the literature, including the privatization and capture of traditional ‘public’ knowledge, the ‘mercantilization’ of knowledge and human capital as resulting from public-private research partnerships, high opportunity costs, and crowding out effects. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the determinants of international research collaboration in developing countries using Colombia as a case study. In fact, knowing the factors affecting the choice of collaborating internationally will help the design of policies aimed at creating local S&T capabilities through the encouragement of the internationalization of the local S&T community, or at reducing the negative effects derived from that process. The research tests the hypotheses formulated using logit models. It considers different types of collaborative activities and different types of partners while controlling for team characteristics, team leader characteristics, scientific field, characteristics of the home institution and team location. Econometric findings and policy implications are discussed.
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ItemTechnology Diffusion Dynamics: The case of Chile’s Forestry Industry(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-07) Catalán, Pablo ; Cozzens, Susan E.Based on Everett Rogers’ diffusion model, the article explores diffusion dynamics in Chile’s Forestry Industry. Technology adoption is defined as depending upon innovation attributes, collaboration, communication channels, research and development (R&D) capacity, and institutional environment. The attributes of innovation are in turn divided into five sub-factors: comparative advantage, compatibility, complexity, observability, and trialability. Our case study analysis is based on 21 interviews with various actors in the Chilean forestry industry and on secondary information sources. Our conclusion is that the attributes of innovation in terms of comparative advantage, observability, and compatibility are technology diffusion drivers, and that the industry needs higher collaboration, better R&D capacity, less bureaucracy, and a more flexible public funding system to achieve a better performance.
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ItemDistributive paths and channels of emerging technologies in developing countries: What can we learn from biotechnology and ICTs in Argentina and Costa Rica?(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-07) Bortagaray, Isabel ; Cozzens, Susan E.This paper analyzes the paths of emerging technologies in developing countries, particularly considering its distributive dimension along the chain of functions, from knowledge production, to the technology’s production/provision, its incorporation into the productive system, and to its more generalized access and use. Two contrasting countries, Argentina and Costa Rica, set the context of study of these paths, the different conditions through which they make their way across sectors and actors, their functions and roles, and the type of distributive channels involved. The analysis of the distributive patterns of emerging technologies must include at least two intertwined levels: at the level of knowledge production, diffusion and access, and the second related to technology’s diffusion-commercialization, access and use. The twofold analysis involve a common emphasis on the identification and analysis of who produces/gets what, how and when, and on the channels of distribution that contribute (or not) to the breadth and depth of the technology. More in particularly, it considers those policies, organizations and/or institutions that substantially influence/shape the way in which the technology penetrates society. In some cases these have to do with establishing channels for bridging knowledge production and use, while in others their contribution is towards the expansion of technological access and appropriation. It also looks at the different roles of policies along each phase of the technology. This paper argues that at the level of knowledge production, public research organizations (national and/or international) are fundamental for catalyzing the expansion of the distributive path, in spite of differences and peculiarities of the technologies. Yet at the level of the distribution of the technology, this role is not always embraced by a specific actor or by policies, in which cases distributive paths are interrupted, and pockets of population remain outside from the technology’s path. It directly results from a large research project, RESULTAR2, oriented to study the distributive consequences of emerging technologies in five countries of the Americas (Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica and United States), and concentrated on two sets of emerging technologies: biotechnologies (GM, tissue culture, and recombinant insulin) and ICTs (Open source software and Mobile Phones). Moreover, RESULTAR attempts to: “(1) describe the dynamics that link emerging technologies to patterns of inequality; (2) identify the roles of public interventions in those dynamics; and (3) develop a framework that policy actors can use prospectively to analyze the distributional valence of a specific new technology in a particular national context.”3. This paper takes some distance from the focus on outcomes to concentrate on the paths of these technologies across the population, focusing on the mechanisms and channels through which they are accessed and utilized. In particular it draws on 40 indepth interviews conducted to a wide range of actors, including researchers, policymakers, technology users, NGOs, and productive actors related to the five technologies in the two countries.
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ItemDistributional Assessment of Emerging Technologies: Summary(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Cozzens, Susan E. ; Knell, MarkEmerging technologies are new, science-based, and potentially high-impact. Emerging technologies are particularly likely to increase inequalities because of initial high prices and high skill requirements. They are good targets for policy changes to reduce inequalities, however, because they are at an early enough stage to be shaped by public interventions. The project reported here studied the distributional consequences of five technologies in eight countries. The central question was "How do public interventions affect distributional outcomes for the same technology under different national conditions?" We studied the distribution of business opportunities, employment, benefits, and costs. The team chose "emerged" technologies for study - those that were introduced some time ago - so that they could track actual effects rather than projecting them. The cases were information and telecommunications technologies and biotechnologies. Examples from the past were used to develop a framework for thinking about the future for new areas such as nanotechnology or synthetic biology. The five cases studied are: genetically modified (GM) maize, mobile phones, open source software, plant tissue culture, and recombinant insulin. They represent both proprietary and public ownership models, and range from simple to highly complex. The eight countries included are: Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, Jamaica, Malta, Mozambique, and the United States. Half are high-income and half are low or middle income countries. With regard to the distribution of business opportunities, two factors were clearly significant. One was intellectual property protection. In some of our cases, multinational corporations held tight control of intellectual property around a new technology, limiting the opportunity for other firms to enter the market. In GM maize, corporate control limited business opportunities even in related industries in countries far from headquarters. In recombinant insulin, the control is so tight that generic manufacturers had a hard time entering the market even after the original patents expired. In contrast, plant tissue culture, a public sphere technology, has created business opportunities in both developed and developing countries in our study. A second constraint on business opportunity, however, is skill. If an environment does not have enough people at a high enough skill level to support or extend the technology, the ownership question is moot. Open source software illustrates. Open source software is more likely to be used in large firms or universities than small ones. The reason appears to be that in order to benefit from the open source code, the organization must have sufficient programming skill to be able to make some adjustments in the software itself. For the same reason, open source software businesses appear to develop only in places where there is already a software industry; we did not find any evidence of open source-based businesses in the developing countries in our study. Direct employment effects of the emerging technologies in our study were small, with the exception of the mobile phone service industry. In mobile phones, new jobs were created directly with the new form of service, but as land line subscriptions begin to drop, jobs will be lost in that part of the telephone business. For the other technologies, high-technology manufacturing jobs tended to stay in affluent countries (e.g., in recombinant insulin), and there was a modest shift from lower-skilled, more dangerous jobs to somewhat higher-skilled, less dangerous ones. For example, GM maize allows for less pesticide use, a benefit to farm workers. By raising and stabilizing yields, the agricultural technologies we studied also stabilize incomes for family farms and their employees. Our study did not include any of the countries that experienced rapid growth in employment through electronics manufacturing - indicating that those experiences may be the exception rather than the rule. Considering the distribution of benefits and costs from the five technologies, we found a number of effects of public interventions (policies). Environmental regulation in Europe raises production costs for farmers who grow GM maize to fend off European corn borers. Deregulation in the mobile phone industry in several of our example countries brought competition, and competition brought the invention of pre-paid plans to reach broader sets of consumers. Pre-paid plans have in turn been the major marketing mechanism allowing very high rates of access in most countries. But the cost per call unit is higher, and the share of family income consumed is also disproportionate for low income families. Even the pre-paid plans, however, cannot reach the poorest consumers in areas where electricity is not dependable and the wireless equipment not installed. Thus we found that in Mozambique, mobile phone use is largely confined to the capital city, and men are much more likely to use them than women. Public procurement makes recombinant insulin available through public health services in most of the countries of our study. But in the United States, the spotty insurance system leaves significant gaps in coverage. And in Mozambique, doctors are hesitant to prescribe an insulin regimen for use in very poor households, which are unlikely to be able to sustain its complicated requirements. Public procurement also made tissue culture for banana plants available to poor farmers in Jamaica, but when the public subsidy disappeared, these farmers could not afford to import the material, as more affluent farmers did. These examples show that the distributional boundary for the technology is drawn in part by public action and in part by family conditions. The study cannot produce a one size fits all set of policy recommendations, because it shows that national conditions matter a great deal in crafting policy options to spread the benefits of new technologies broadly. It does, however, suggest that * Intellectual property protection should be moderated so that it is not used to suppress business opportunities or limit the availability of essential goods. * Pockets of highly-skilled workers can be critical in giving developing countries local access to new technologies. * Basic infrastructure and education are important investments in increasing the capacity of highly unequal countries to absorb and diffuse new technologies widely.
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ItemCommunity-Based Research and Development (R&D) Patterns in the Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) Sector(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Catalan, Pablo ; Cozzens, Susan E.I explore patterns in regard to community based Research and Development in the Water Supply and Sanitation sector. I set a bibliometric analysis, covering the 1998-2008 period, by means of applying a framework based on three factors: productivity, collaboration, and research topics, which are analyzed at global and country level. Results show: a) Northern countries are the most productive ones; b) though not significant as it should, North-South collaboration is increasing; and c) Southern concerns do not represent a major share of Northern R&D, though an upward is noted.
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ItemDistributive Paths and Channels of Emerging Technologies in Developing Countries: What Can We Learn from Biotechnology and ICTs in Argentina and Costa Rica?(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Bortagaray, Isabel ; Cozzens, Susan E.This paper analyzes the paths of emerging technologies in developing countries, particularly considering its distributive dimension along the chain of functions, from knowledge production, to the technology's production/provision, its incorporation into the productive system, and to its more generalized access and use. Two contrasting countries, Argentina and Costa Rica, set the context of study of these paths, the different conditions through which they make their way across sectors and actors, their functions and roles, and the type of distributive channels involved. The analysis of the distributive patterns of emerging technologies must include at least two intertwined levels: at the level of knowledge production, diffusion and access, and the second related to technology's diffusion-commercialization, access and use. The twofold analysis involve a common emphasis on the identification and analysis of who produces/gets what, how and when, and on the channels of distribution that contribute (or not) to the breadth and depth of the technology. More in particularly, it considers those policies, organizations and/or institutions that substantially influence/shape the way in which the technology penetrates society. In some cases these have to do with providing channels for bridging the knowledge production and use, while in others they contribute with the expansion of technological access and appropriation. It also looks at the different roles of policies along each phase of the technology. This paper argues that at the level of knowledge production, public research organizations (national and/or international) are fundamental for catalyzing the expansion of the distributive path, in spite of differences and peculiarities of the technologies. Yet at the level of the distribution of the technology, this role is not always embraced by a specific actor or by policies, in which cases distributive paths are interrupted, and pockets of population remain outside from the technology's path. This study directly results from a large research project, RESULTAR , oriented to study the distributive consequences of emerging technologies in five countries of the Americas (Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica and United States), and concentrated on two sets of emerging technologies: biotechnologies (GM, tissue culture, and recombinant insulin) and ICTs (Open source software and Mobile Phones). Moreover, RESULTAR attempts to: "(1) describe the dynamics that link emerging technologies to patterns of inequality; (2) identify the roles of public interventions in those dynamics; and (3) develop a framework that policy actors can use prospectively to analyze the distributional valence of a specific new technology in a particular national context." This paper in particular draws on 40 in-depth interviews conducted to a wide range of actors, including researchers, policy-makers, technology users, NGOs, and productive actors related to the five technologies in the two countries.
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ItemBiotechnology Paths in Developing Countries: Analyzing GM in Costa Rica and Jamaica and Learning from Plant Tissue Culture(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Bortagaray, Isabel ; Cozzens, Susan E. ; Gatchair, SoniaGM biotechnology has been hailed as one of the most significant advancements in agriculture since the green revolution with the potential to reduce hunger and deprivation in the world's poorest countries and contribute to continuing advances in the developed countries. While a few countries appear to be reaping the promised benefits, more than twenty years after the first introduction of commercial genetically modified crops, most developing countries have not engaged in widespread adoption. Agricultural biotechnology has failed to deliver its promise of revolutionizing food production in poor countries. Although the number of crops and transgenic events approved for cultivation in the developed world continues to increase, developing countries lag behind in approvals for commercial GM crop cultivation. Developing countries that have led the way in the approval process include the Philippines, South Africa, Argentina, Mexico, and Uruguay. Many of the countries at the forefront of adoption have large scale commercial activities where concerns about productivity and profitability are likely to figure prominently. Commercial production appears stymied not by the lack of research as over 50 crops have been transformed in 16 developing countries, but by the high cost and slow pace of regulatory approvals (Sairam & Prakash, 2005). Other explanations for the low level of adoption in developing countries include rejection of GM crops by important trading partners; lack of absorptive capacity for basic and applied research; and environmental implications (J. I. Cohen & Paarlberg, 2004; Paarlberg, 2002). Developing countries, when putting in place appropriate regulatory frameworks have to contend with the task of balancing mixed signals from the political and scientific communities in developed countries, inadequate capacity and resources, national sentiment and needs. This paper takes a systematic look at agricultural biotechnology, in particular GM crop cultivation in two small developing countries, Costa Rica and Jamaica in an effort to identify the conditions in which the technology has emerged in the country, both in terms of the knowledge production, and its introduction into the productive system. It examines the countries' science, technology and innovation systems, institutional and trade arrangements as well as historical and cultural factors within the national contexts in an attempt to identify factors that impede or facilitate the adoption of the technology. It attempts to identify specific policies that could be adopted to make better use of the technology. Furthermore, the study of GM in Costa Rica and Jamaica is contrasted with the introduction of an older biotechnology that is more widely adopted and utilized in developed countries, as it is the case of tissue culture. We analyze the conditions in which tissue culture has been incorporated, with the focus on banana, a very relevant crop in the economy of both countries. The aim is to take the experience and trajectory of tissue culture and use it as a yardstick, and as a learning tool, given its older condition, in spite of the enormous differences surrounding both biotechnologies at different levels, i.e., technological, cultural, regulatory, costs, markets, etc. This paper draws on extensive interviews and reviews of secondary data, including reports and other documents that allow us to trace the biotechnology path in the two countries. The two countries were chosen because of their similarity and concerted efforts to make use of STI policies in social and economic development, yet these efforts have met with only limited (mixed) success. The study results from a larger research project on distributional consequences of emerging technologies, Resultar, coordinated by Susan Cozzens at the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology.
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ItemInternational Co-Authorship and Research Team Performance in Colombia(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-02) Cozzens, Susan E. ; García-Luque, Margarita ; Ordonez, GonzaloRecent trends show that Colombian S&T performance is improving rapidly. This paper examines the ways in which International Scientific Collaboration, as observed by the co-authorship of journal articles written by local scientists and partners located overseas, affects the ability of research teams to produce bibliographic outputs and to contribute to local knowledge. A sample of 672 teams was randomly selected for the analyses. Research hypotheses were tested using Zero Inflated Negative Binomial Regression and Logistic regression, as well as through the use of control groups and the Propensity Score Matching approach to assess the overall impact of the scientific collaboration on research team performance. In addition, 20 interviews with experts and team members were administered to discuss models and results. Results show that co-authoring with partners located overseas increases team output by nearly 40% and by between 3 and 5 bibliographic products. It also shows that team's odds of involving Colombia in its research process are 2.2 times larger for those co-authoring with a partner located overseas than for those that do not. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.
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ItemInternational Research Collaboration in Small and Big Science: Comparing Global Research Output Between Biofuels and Neutron Scattering(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-02) Cozzens, Susan E. ; Harari, Elena BergerWe investigate patterns of international research collaboration in two different fields: biofuels, and neutron scattering. We use bibliometric analysis with data retrieved from the Science Citation Index, through Web of Science from 2003 through 2008. We find that international collaboration in relation to the number of publications in the field is more intense in neutron scattering than in biofuels. Moreover, international teams in neutron scattering include more countries than is the case in biofuels. We also find that publications in biofuels have increased faster among some of the BRIC (Brazil, India, China) countries than among the U.S. and European countries. In neutron scattering publications remain concentrated in more developed countries. The U.S. remains the leader in scientific production in both fields. The emergence of developing countries as producers of science in biofuels suggests opportunities for North-South collaboration in research.
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