Sustainability Oriented Innovation Systems In China And India

Global economic growth, recently fuelled by Asia’s emerging economies, has greatly accelerated the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and boosted demand for scarce natural resources, including energy, food and mineral raw materials. These developments are pushing the planet close to its ecological boundaries. Transforming the world economy towards sustainability, while ensuring decent levels of resource use for all global citizens, is the greatest challenge of our time. This book explores how innovation systems need to be adapted to successfully confront these challenges. The first chapter introduces the concept of sustainability-oriented innovation systems which highlights the systematic differences between systems that have developed along current resource-intensive technological trajectories and those that address the impending environmental mega-problems. The subsequent articles present case studies of sustainability-oriented innovations in a number of policy areas, including energy efficiency, electric mobility and generation of renewable energy, in China and India. These case studies confirm the specificities of innovation systems geared towards a green techno-economic paradigm. This book was originally published as a special issue of Innovation and Development.

A rigorous examination of the motivations, sources, obstacles to and consequences of China's drive to become a leading innovative nation.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. Continuation along current development pathways is not sustainable. Available technology and production practices and the consumption patterns of modern societies are leading to global warming and ecological destruction. Business as usual is not an option. There is an urgent need to find a new development paradigm that ensures environmental sustainability while managing to provide, now and in the future, a decent livelihood for all of humankind. In Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development, experts in the area provide a variety of insights about the technical transformation needed for sustainable development. It spells out the behavioural and policy changes that would need to accompany the next technological transformation, taking into account the complexity of inducing technological change in the energy and agricultural sectors. The assessment suggests that this will require major, but doable improvements in national innovation systems and major, but affordable shifts in investment patterns and related macroeconomic adjustments.

This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the latest research from leading scholars on the international political economy of energy and resources. Highlighting the important conceptual and empirical themes, the chapters study all levels of governance, from global to local, and explore the wide range of issues emerging in a changing political and economic environment.

This book looks at the policy challenges confronting India and other developing countries in creating a robust, sustainable and industrialized economy. It investigates different facets of the nature, structure, growth and impact of innovation in industries, education and within institutions to foster greater productivity and growth. The volume examines systems adopted to boost innovation and diffusion of technology in different economies while also mapping their success and failures. It offers suggestions for the future for long-term growth, sustainability and inclusiveness amidst dynamic, fast-changing technological frontiers using examples and case studies from India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, among others. The chapters in the book, written to honour the academic work of Professor Lakhwinder Singh in the field of development economics and innovation economics, highlight the importance of adopting and adapting new technologies and development models to local contexts and small industries. An important contribution to research on innovation economics, this interdisciplinary book will be of interest to students, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers working in industrial economics, international economics, political economy, innovation economics, institutional economics, industrial organization and international trade.

In the post-liberalization period, India has slowly but steadily tried to foster innovation to improve competitive efficiency of Indian manufacturing and thus boost global competitiveness of the industrial sector. Foreign direct investment was looked upon as a major source of technology paradigm shift; in recent times, industrial firms have been investing overseas, even in countries to which they used to export, based on their technological capabilities. Firms in Indian manufacturing industries have also attempted to bring about technological upgrades through imports of design and drawings (disembodied technology) against lump sum, royalty and technical knowhow fees, and imports of capital machinery (embodied technology) where the technology is embodied in the capital good itself. This volume comprises empirical contributions on this emerging phenomenon, on a range of issues including the role of R&D; mergers, acquisitions and technological efforts; technological determinants of competitive advantages; the role of small and medium enterprises and regional patterns; technological efforts and global operations; and the role of industrial clusters in promoting innovation and competitiveness. This book was originally published as a special issue of Innovation and Development.

The aims of and motives for development cooperation have changed significantly in recent times. Besides pursuing short- and longer-term objectives in their own economic, foreign policy and other interests, donors usually have a recognisable and genuine interest in assisting countries in their processes of development.

This book explores the dynamics of global innovation networks and their implications for development. Knowledge is often seen as the main determinant of economic growth, competitiveness and employment. There is a strong causal interaction between capability building and the growth in demand for, and supply of, technical and organizational innovation. This complex of skills, knowledge and innovation holds great potential benefit for development, particularly in the context of developing countries. However, despite evidence of the increasing importance of knowledge and innovation, there has been relatively little research to understand the distribution and coordination of innovation and knowledge-intensive economic activities on a global scale – and what this might mean for economic development. Each chapter – though sharing an underlying conception of innovation systems, innovation networks and their relation to capability-building and development – takes a different theoretical stance. The authors explore the emerging relationship between competence building and the structure of global innovation networks, thus providing a valuable new perspective from which to critically assess their development potential. This book was originally published as a special issue of Innovation and Development.