Due to retirement and ill health, I lost touch with much of recent discussions on technology development issues in poor countries though I continued to be involved through membership of the governing council of the African Centre for Technology Studies [ACTS]. Then in July 2025 I received a long catch-up text from Andy Hall, a former colleague and principal scientist at the CSIRO in Canberra. In it he asked me if I would see Dr Rajesh Nair who is managing the latest in a series of international interchanges summarised under the heading CRIS [Centre for Research on Innovation Studies]. This body stems from the Globelics group set up originally in the mid-80s as a means of drawing international attention to technology development inequalities in economically poor countries and the importance of “innovation systems [IS]” thinking in its improvement.

He sent me a short paper summarising recent literature on the issue including from people like Peter Hall, Debora Stones and Marianna Mazzucato. In the paper Nair argues that there is still a lack of policy direction inherent in much international innovation systems [IS] thinking. A lot of this literature suggests that the nature of current technology policy is still heavily oriented towards a depiction of technology development that is deeply governed by the pursuit of scientific knowledge in specialist organisations. These continue to be largely based on traditional disciplines that seem unable to grasp the essentially integrated and people-based nature of modern innovation systems.

This in turn stems from a view that that the main orientation is still “economic” which tends to abstract from concerns such environmental health and stability, and modern work practices. His general view [and Andy Hall goes along with as well] is that despite the wider acceptance of innovation systems thinking in much policy analysis, it still doesn’t translate into guidance on how to make sensible policy in practice. When we met in my flat Rajesh told me that the CRIS online-network initiative has been managing a series of interviews with people who have been active in the development of innovation systems analysis in action, and he wondered if I would like to be the next “interviewee” since clearly I had been closely involved in the early years, especially when Chris Freeman was establishing SPRU in the mid-60s. Of course, I said yes, for many obvious reasons, and since this involved returning to the arguments set out in the book I had published with Calestous Juma on “Long-Run Economics” in 1987 [reprinted 2013].

My feeling at that time, which hasn’t really changed, is that if you’re going to call something a “system” than you should have an external reference point that defines generally what a system is. Calestous and I felt that the IS people were simply avoiding this and by default, as it were, describing it as a branch of economics. And I was too much of a Keynesian to accept that. Hence the move to general systems theory as a wider reference point. This led us both to Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Arthur Koestler, Ilya Prigogine, Peter Allen etc, which in turn suggested engaging directly with empirical discussion of appropriate examples [in our case fuel ethanol and photovoltaics].

The fact that I knew Peter and was beginning to work with him at Cranfield simply boosted the choice. And since Calestous had spent some time researching “examples” that was the next logical step. After discussion between ourselves we decided such a path involved an exploration of “information” and “knowledge” and the complex evolutionary processes this involved. Examples included issues in scientific hierarchies, the philosophy of science, processes of knowledge exchange and validation, and how all this occurs.It is interesting to see nowadays how this is happening in practice. A good example is current Chinese innovations under their heading “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. The communist party there clearly sees a distinction between two types of capacity building.

One is commercial, best left to private enterprise. The other is orchestrated from the top. In China this means the communist party which controls public transport, national education facilities, health service provision, social security and related types of collective infrastructure. A good example of the last of these is the “belt and road” initiative whereby the national Chinese government [or its organs] finances major investments in international infrastructure across major countries such as those in Africa and Latin America. But there are many other examples.

On the other hand, private investments have been left to the commercial sector which in the China case have exploded over the last 40 years or so. Much of this was originally started by US companies attracted by large amounts of cheap labour supply and under-exploited markets. But learning has taken place on an enormous scale and China is now leading in most major industrial areas such as automobiles, batteries, artificial intelligence, telephone systems, power supplies, semiconductors and many others. All this is much to the concern of US commercial interests where there are beginning to emerge chronic gaps in national supply chains exacerbated by labour supply shortages and growing inflationary trends. Of course, it is also affecting a lot of SE Asian economic activity more generally.

What emerged for us was the need for large scale mechanisms to foster improved information exchange mechanisms to supplement private investments and this could only be met by the large commercial sector or the by the state [or its components] itself. In Chapter 9 we outlined some of our policy conclusions. Our cases showed these in outline for Brazil [in the case of fuel ethanol] and more widely in the case of photovoltaics, now becoming a topical issue in the semiconductor sector. We did try to move ACTS activity in this direction but unsuccessfully. We were equally unsuccessful among the IS community at the time though things might have evolved. However, it is clear that CRIS is continuing to play an important role in showing the need for further exploration of Chris Freeman’s original vision for the role of technology in economic development for poorer countries.

 

Norman Clark [Emeritus Professor, Open University & Strathclyde Universities, UK]30th September 2025.

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