My highlights from the pdf

Intangible investments in knowledge accumulation
1. Innovation eco system now??
Friedrich List
1. Dig Deeper
Different types of capital
1. money
2. Intellectual
  1. Discoveries
  2. Inventions
  3. Improvements
  4. Perfection
  5. Exertions
3. Others
Many British policies for education and training for over a century can be realistically viewed as spasmodic, belated and never wholly successful attempts to catch up with German technological education and training systems.
he also recognised the interdependence of the import of foreign technology and domestic technical development
Nations should not only acquire the achievements of other more advanced nations, they should increase them by their own efforts.
There scarcely exists a manufacturing business which has no relation to physics,mechanics, chemistry, mathematics or to the art of design, etc
Not only did Friedrich List|F List analyse many features of the national system of innovation which are at the heart of contemporary studies (education and training institutions, science, technical institutes, user-producer interactive learning, knowledge accumulation, adapting imported technology, promotion of strategic industries, etc.) he also put great emphasis on the role of the state in coordinating and carrying through long-term policies for industry and the economy.
Report on Manufactures
However, the abundance of cheap, accessible materials, energy and land together with successive waves of immigration imparted to the United States' national system some specific characteristics without parallel in Europe. The pro-active role of the state was greater in Germany whilst foreign investment played a greater role in the United States
Product and process innovation by firms took place of course for more than a century before that, but it was the German dyestuffs industry (Beer, 1959) which first realised that it could be profitable to put the business of research for new products and development of new chemical processes on a regular, systematic and professional basis
Hoechst, Bayer and BASF have continued and strengthened this tradition down to the present day, when their R&D labs now employ many thousands of scientists and engineers
Frascati Manual
The rate of technical change and economic progress depended more on diffusion rather than being a head in research and development.
Social innovations are equally important or more important than technical innovations.
Feedback from the market are important.
The 'linear Model' was specifically endorsed in the influential Report of Vannevar Bush, 'Science, the Endless Frontier'
Japan, no explanation of how patents and R&D led to
Higher quality of new products.
Shorter lead times.
Rapid diffusion of technologies.
Moreover, Archibugi and Pinta (1991) have demonstrated the growing pattern of specialisation in technology and trade and Fagerberg (1992) has shown the continuing importance of the home market for comparative technological advantage.
For example, Ohmae (1990) in his book The Borderless World argues that national frontiers are 'melting away' in what he calls the 'ILE' (inter-linked economy)—the triad of USA, EC and Japan, now being joined by NICs
As the model developed by Callon (1993) indicates, the diffusion process can tend to enhance similarities between adopters.
In fact both processes (global standardisation in some areas but increasing diversity in others) co-exist.
More realistic assumptions and a more realistic vision are essential if economic theory is to be of any help in policy-making
When it comes to radical innovations the importance of institutional variety and localised learning is even greater.
It is of course true that in the global diffusion of radical innovations, TNCs may have an extremely important role.
Here it is essential to emphasise the interdependencies between innovations and between technical innovations and organisational innovations.

Whereas incremental innovations can be easily accommodated, this may not be the case with radical innovations which by definition involve an element of [[creative destruction]].

The diffusion of a new techno-economic paradigm is a trial and error process involving great institutional variety. There are evolutionary advantages in this variety and considerable clangers in being locked in too early to a standardised technology. A technological monoculture may be more dangerous than an ecological monoculture.
Even when a technology matures and shows clear-cut advantages and scale economies it is important to retain flexibility and to nourish alternative sources of radically new technology and work organisation.
It can be rather attributed to a unique combination of interacting social, economic and technical changes within the national economic space.
It was the British Prime Minister who said to Adam Smith: 'We are all your pupils now'.
List anticipated many contemporary ideas about 'national systems of innovation' including the crucial importance of technological accumulation through a combination of technology imports with local activities and pro-active interventionist policies to foster strategic 'infant' industries
that institutional differences in the mode of importing, improving, developing and diffusing new technologies, products and processes played a major role in their sharply contrasting growth rates in the 1980s
This paper has argued that nation states, national economies and national systems of innovation are still essential domains of economic and political analysis, despite some shifts to upper and nether regions.

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