National Innovation Systems at ASIALICS 6 Hongkong – 1 of 5

The Philippines is a world technology leader in renewable geothermal energy and in eucheuma-sourced carrageenan (E407a) mainly through the work of private firms. Yet, these achievements count for nothing in the current global innovation survey under the Oslo protocol. The protocol only counts R&D spending and patents as proxies for innovation performance.

Sitting on the ring of fire, geothermal energy can be a potential source of power for such economies as Singapore and China which are hungry for green energy (this will be a subject for a future post). SYNTHESiST Posts #43 and #44 chronicle the saga Philippine Natural Grade carrageenan.

This quirk I learned when I attended the 6th Asian Network for Learning, Innovation and Competence Building (ASIALICS) conference in at the Hongkong University of Science and Technology on July 6-7, 2009. Click for the ASIALICS website here.

At HKUST, July 2009

The ASIALICS came about when, at a previous GLOBELICS conference, Asians saw that we have a unique set of constraints and parameters that need a customized approach.

GLOBELICS was first organized by a group of academicians who espoused a concept of National Innovations Systems (NIS) based on evolutionary – Schumpeterian – economics. It arose from work done in the 1980’s at the University of Sussex by a team headed by Christopher Freeman and which included Bengt-Ake Lundvall. Professor Lundvall wrote a book in 1992, National Systems of Innovation: Towards a Theory of Innovation and Interactive Learning, subsequently updated in his Working Paper 2007-01, Innovation System Research Where it came from and where it might go. (Look up his paper in Post #17.) I will call this group the Sussex school.

Click image for link to GLOBELICS’s site with Lundvall’s paper

The NIS concept as espoused by GLOBELICS revolved around roles and relationships between Universities, Industry and Firms and the Government-sponsored Research and Technology Organizations (RTOs) engaged in national innovation. Briefly, the Lundvall NIS ideal concept assigns specific roles to the University, as research institutions and knowledge source, the RTO as technology manager, and the Government as the entity picking winning industries (and in certain cases, firms).

Other NIS concepts have similar players with slightly different roles. The Triple Helix considers that Universities may go into pilot industry through incubators and business itself, Firms may go into research and training, and Government doing partial roles of Firms and Universities, too. The American approach is closest to the free-market (See Post #6) with facilitating and mutually exclusive variables identified. The Department of Defense and NASA do much basic research related to arms and space. Otherwise, Firms initiate most activities including recruitment of University professors for company specific research.

Most of those who attended the 6h ASIALICS have some relation with the Sussex school as graduate students or professors. I am not aware of any attendee coming from the American, free market school.

I found ASIALICS in a roundabout way as I posted on SYNTHESiST – first the American NIC’s Global Trends and NIS, then Professor Lundvall and the Sussex school, GLOBELICS and finally ASIALICS. I have studies the industrial policy approach of Japan’s MITI (See Post #21), hence I decided to attend the conference.

I was not disappointed despite the often ponderous, academic approach …

Click here for Part 2, 3, 4 or 5.