Research and Technology Outsourcing and Systems of Innovation

Abstract

This chapter seeks to locate the process of research and technology outsourcing in relation to the wider innovation process and to investigate the growth of the phenomenon within a system of innovation framework. To reflect this, the chapter is in four main parts. The first main section outlines the factors behind the process of research and technology outsourcing process and explanatory models that have been used to conceptualise the process. The next section then charts the growth of research and technology outsourcing and puts in an historical perspective, linking up with the explanatory and conceptual frameworks presented in the preceding section. Developing some of these findings, the chapter then places the process of research and technology outsourcing within the wider systemic and market context before reviewing the implications of research and technological outsourcing more specifically within the’ system of innovation’ approach to innovation. These approaches centre on the’ systems of innovation’ model based originally on the ‘national systems of innovation’ (NSI) studies developed by Freeman (1987, 1988),Lundvall (1988, 1992) and Nelson (1992; Nelson and Rosenberg, 1993), but also includes the ‘technology system’ approach developed by Carlsson (1995).