Studies on Science and the Innovation Process

The following sections are included:

• Other Books by Nathan Rosenberg

• Prologue

• Acknowledgments

• Permissions

• Contents

In view of the prominence played by universities in the papers that make up this book, it seems appropriate to provide some of the background conditions that have shaped institutions of higher education in the course of American history. Indeed, this recourse to history is inevitable, not only in understanding the introduction of new forms of educational institutions or new academic disciplines. Innovations are hardly ever subjects that can be well-illuminated with only the assistance of sweeping generalizations or abstract theories…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• Metallurgy

• Construction

• Materials Testing

• Food Processing, Packing, and Canning

• Conclusion

• Notes

The following sections are included:

• University/Industry Interfaces

• Spillovers and Spilloffs: University Research as the Knowledge Base for Entrepreneurship

• Two Exemplary Cases: CT and MRI

• The Role of Venture Capital

• A Closing Conjecture

• Endnotes

The following sections are included:

• INTRODUCTION

• THE IMPORTANCE OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS

• THE DIFFUSION AND IMPACT OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTATION
  • Diffusion Across Disciplines
  • Diffusion from the Academic Laboratory to Industry
  • Diffusion from Industry to the Wider Research Community

• THE ROLE OF INSTRUMENTATION IN SHAPING FUTURE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

• CONCLUSIONS: THE IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH AND SCIENCE POLICY

• NOTES

• REFERENCES

Back in an earlier, more naïve day, we managed to allow ourselves to believe that there was a purely technological solution–a cheap “technological fix” –to the problems of poverty and economic backwardness which beset most of the human race. In the Point Four of his 1949 inaugural address President Truman spoke optimistically of the incalculable benefits which technical assistance could bring to improving the desperate plight of the poor throughout the world “We must embark,” he said, “on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.”…

The contribution to growth from the steam engine—Industrial Revolution icon and prime example of a “General Purpose Technology”—has remained unclear. This article examines the role that a particular design improvement in steam power, embodied in the Corliss engine, played in the growth of the U.S. economy in the late nineteenth century. Using detailed data on the location of Corliss engines and waterwheels and a two-stage estimation strategy, we show that the deployment of Corliss engines served as a catalyst for the industry's massive relocation into large urban centers, thus fueling agglomeration economies and further population growth.

The following sections are included:

• INTRODUCTION

• THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

• FEATURES OF ELECTRIFICATION

• ELECTRICITY AND INDUSTRIAL POWER

• ELECTRICITY IN METALLURGY

• CONCLUSIONS

• REFERENCES

The following sections are included:

• Some Historical Perspectives

• Dimensions of Uncertainty

• Reviving Old Technologies—or Killing Them Off

• Conclusion

Models that depict innovation as a smooth, well-behaved linear process badly misspecify the nature and direction of the causal factors at work. Innovation is complex, uncertain, somewhat disorderly, and subject to changes of many sorts. Innovation is also difficult to measure and demands close coordination of adequate technical knowledge and excellent market judgment in order to satisfy economic, technological, and other types of constraints—all simultaneously. The process of innovation must be viewed as a series of changes in a complete system not only of hardware, but also of market environment, production facilities and knowledge, and the social contexts of the innovation organization.

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• Corporate Research Labs

• How Engineering Disciplines Have Shaped Science

• How New Products Have Shaped Science

• Serendipity

• Instrumentation

• Notes

• References

The question to be addressed is: Why do private firms perform basic research with their own money? Interest in this question derives from both analytical and utilitarian considerations. There is empirical evidence in the United States, which provides the main context for this paper. Supporting the view that basic research makes a significant contribution to the productivity growth of the economy [4,7]. It is widely held that social returns from basic research are significant and higher than private returns and it is for this reason that most such activities continue to be financed by the taxpayer. This also implies that measures aimed at increasing basic research by the private sector will be welfare improving. In the United States, the federal government in the years since the Second World War has provided the vast majority of all funds devoted to basic research. Although the federal share has been declining in recent years, and although that share is at its lowest level in about 20 years, it still constitutes about two-thirds of the total [10]…

The following sections are included:

• FIBER OPTICS AND GASTROINTESTINAL ENDOSCOPY
  • The Fiber-Optic Era
  • Further Refinements and New Clinical Applications

• GYNECOLOGICAL LAPAROSCOPY: THE CASE OF SURGICAL CONTRACEPTION
  • Developing and Establishing the Clinical Value of First-Generation Gynecological Laparoscopes (1945–1960s)
  • Development of Second-and Third-Generation Procedures (1970s and 1980s)

• THE SURGEON AND ENDOSCOPY: LAPAROSCOPIC CHOLECYSTECTOMY

• SOME CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS AND SPECULATIONS

• REFERENCES

The following sections are included:

• Why Uncertainty Endures

• The Post-Innovation Innovation Process

• Policy Implications

• References

The following sections are included:

• The Emergence of the Life Sciences

• X-ray Crystallography: A Powerful New Instrument for Medical Research

• US Academic Medical Centers (AMCs) and the Stanford Program
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Radiotherapy

• Closing Observations

• References

• Endnotes

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• Relationship of Chemical Engineering to the Science of Chemistry

• Emergence of Chemical Engineering

• Maturing and Expanding Application of Chemical Engineering

• Role of MIT

• Rise of the Petrochemical Industry

• Some Concluding Observations

The following sections are included:

• INTRODUCTION

• WHY IN AMERICA?

• THE QUESTION OF SCALE

• THE BEGINNING OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

• THE MATURING OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

• GRADUATE TRAINING IN CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

• THE ROLE OF SCIENCE

• INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENTS

• THE IMPACT OF THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

• THE RISE OF PETROCHEMICALS AND THE ROLE OF MIT

• CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

• REFERENCES

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• Marx on the History of Capitalism

• Features of Technological Innovation

• Distinctive Features of Capitalism

• Autonomy of the Economic Sphere

• Organizational Diversity of Capitalism

• Problems of 20th Century Socialism

• Conclusion

• References

Aircraft design became a subject of great importance in the second decade of the twentieth century. Germany completely dominated the underlying science, the theory of aerodynamics, under the towering leadership of Ludwig Prandtl at Gottingen University. Prandtl was a professor at Gottingen from 1904 until his death in 1953. His articulation of the boundary-layer hypothesis in 1904, a hypothesis that had emerged out of his earlier interest in the flow of liquids, was to become the most fundamental concept of aerodynamic theory, a theory that was further elaborated primarily in Germany in the interwar years…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• Schumpeter and Marx: their common vision

• Schumpeter and Walras: filial piety?

• Conclusion