Learning, Capability Building and Innovation for Development
Today, a large number of scholars studying development understand this process as involving learning and capability building. Capability building is an active, not a passive, process. It requires a purposeful effort from the learner's side, with support a
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1 Gabriela Dutrénit, Keun Lee, Richard Nelson, Luc Soete and Alexandre O. Vera-Cruz
Today, a large number of scholars studying the development of countries below technological and economic frontiers understand the process as involving active learning, capability building and innovation, in the sense of introducing new ways of doing things in the local environment and sometimes even at an international level, with all the risks of failure as well as the promise of great progress associated with innovation. Jorge Katz was among the first scholars of economic development to espouse this point of view (Katz, 1976, 1984, 1986 and 1987). When he began to do so over 40 years ago, he was a lonely voice in the wilderness. Nowadays this view of economic development is widely, if far from universally, accepted. The authors of this book dedicate it to Jorge, in recognition of the fact that we are following an intellectual trail that he blazed. This approach to economic development as a process of learning and building technological capabilities emerged from analysing the determinants of economic development using Schumpeterian lenses and an appreciative theorizing methodology, as put forward by Nelson and Winter (1982). While focused on what is happening in the economy, the perspective is interdisciplinary. The main building blocks of this approach are highlighted below. First, capability building is an active, not a passive, process. It does not simply involve almost automatic learning by doing or practices, but requires a purposeful effort on the learner’s part, supported by committed allocation of time and resources towards learning activities. This process implies the possibility of failure as well as success, as we learn from failures too. Due to the uncertainty associated with research activities, innovation is risky as well as potentially productive and profitable. Empirical evidence recollected and systematized since the 1970s has shown that technological change in developing countries cannot only be associated with a technology transfer process of “off the shelf” packages; firms in these countries are not passive recipients of technology. On the contrary, there are learning and domestic efforts (i.e. there is indigenous technological knowledge generation); the technology 1
10.1057/9781137306937.0005 - Introduction, Gabriela Dutrénit, Keun Lee, Richard Nelson, Luc Soete and Alexandre O. Vera-Cruz
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Introduction
Learning, Capability Buildin
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