Technical Change and Industrial Transformation: The Patterns of Industrial Dynamics

Abstract

In the previous chapter, we have been trying to assess the determinants and the patterns of innovation, suggesting the existence of quite general procedures and directions of technical progress. The model based on technological paradigms and technological trajectories helped us in interpreting these broad regularities in the innovation process. We must now look more closely at the relationship between the patterns of technical change, on the one hand, and industrial structures, on the other hand. The task has to be twofold: one must try to assess first, the conditions which, on behavioural grounds, normally induce the company sector to innovate, and, second, the effects of technical change on the evolution of industrial structures.