The challenge of building an effective innovation system for catch-up

Catching up is not a process of exact copying but reflects deliberate and often creative modifications to tailor practice to national conditions, especially those practices associated with institutions and norms within which the physical technologies embodied in productive economic activities and their operation are embedded. These "social technologies" are more difficult to acquire than the physical. This paper demonstrates these propositions by looking historically at changes in legal, research and training institutions. It concludes by questioning the extent to which current practices of extensive patenting and licensing activities of US universities have been the key to their effectiveness in contributing to economic development and the relevance of copying such practices in the broad institutional context of other nations.