Master
2024/2025
Technology Policy
Type:
Elective course (Science, Technology and Innovation Management and Policy)
Area of studies:
Management
Delivered by:
Department of Educational Programmes
When:
1 year, 4 module
Mode of studies:
offline
Open to:
students of all HSE University campuses
Master’s programme:
Governance of Science, Technology and Innovation
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
3
Course Syllabus
Abstract
Governments for many years have considered Industrial Policy as the ultima ratio policy for building, growing and maintaining an industrial base in their countries. The main rational behind was and remains creating employment and enabling domestic industries being competitive at global markets. For achieving this a mix of different policy measures has been applied including direct financial support (subsidies) and indirect financial support (infrastructure related measures). Technology and innovation policy on the other hand is more targeted at supporting technology development and providing an environment supportive to innovation. All these policies have in common that governments intervene in what they consider market failures.Only in recent years the policies overlap increasingly. For example, digital technologies provide a broad potential for application in more than one industry so technology development appears to be another often underestimated driver of industrial development thereby regional and national economic development. The course introduces industry policy under the technology and innovation policy paradigm.
Learning Objectives
- Introduce students to the realm and reach of technology policy and its effects on innovation performance.
- Highlight the role of states in shaping technology policy and guiding innovation behaviour & technology trajectories.
- Acquainting students with the interplay between innovation & technology policy on the one hand and industrial development & technological sovereignty on the other.
- Clarify the nexus between innovation & technology policy and global grand challenges in the context of shifting geopolitical power balance.
Expected Learning Outcomes
- Understanding innovation concepts, its relation to entrepreneurship, inventions and innovations, R&D, IPR issues and debates, innovation drivers and constraints, diffusion models, its effects on firm performance and on broader socioeconomic outcomes.
- Understanding capabilities (indicators), innovation efforts, the role of incentives and institutions in driving innovation performance.
- Understanding the role of national, regional and sectoral innovation systems.
- Understanding the role of radical innovations in driving technological change, incremental innovations, difference in optimal technology policy between developing and developed countries.
- Understanding the transformative role of innovation in building industrial dynamism in developing countries and in maintaining technological leadership in developed ones, innovation and structural transformation, innovation and social change.
- Understanding the role of the state in shaping the direction of technological change and economic development, relations between state and private sector, governing the market (not “picking the winner”).
- Understanding the role of national (and regional) innovation systems, mission-driven innovation & industrial policy, innovation and regional integration, etc.
- Understanding public purpose innovation, strategic innovation; innovation and national competitiveness, innovation and technological paradigms.
- Understanding global value chains, technological upgrading, political economy of innovation, policy tools of technological sovereignty, innovation and the shifting geopolitical power balance, innovation and “offensive realism” theory.
- Understanding difference between collaboration and competition, innovation in the era of global warming, innovation for future energy supply (nuclear fusion, thorium reactors, energy security, etc).
- Understanding whither with artificial intelligence, the future of manufacturing, Internet of Things, the future of connectivity, autonomous machines, pandemics., etc.
Course Contents
- Fundamentals of economics of innovation
- Innovation determinants at firm and national level
- Innovation in a systemic approach
- Innovation and technological change
- Innovation and development
- Industrial policy and developmental states
- Innovation policy as a strategic tool
- Innovation and technological sovereignty
- Innovation & global challenges
- Emerging issues in innovation policy debates
Assessment Elements
- Essay on technology and industrial policy
- Online test based on course materialsControl based on open questions to evaluate the assimilation of the main concepts and relationships in innovation and technology policy, as well as the underlying dynamics.
Interim Assessment
- 2024/2025 4th module0.6 * Essay on technology and industrial policy + 0.4 * Online test based on course materials
Bibliography
Recommended Core Bibliography
- 9780585238517 - World Bank - The East Asian Miracle : Economic Growth and Public Policy - 1993 - World Bank Publications - https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=33632 - nlebk - 33632
- Kicking away the ladder : development strategy in historical perspective, Chang, H.- J., 2002
Recommended Additional Bibliography
- Schumpeter, J. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1978) fifth edition [ISBN 9780043350324] Chapters 21 and 22