SID Lecture: The Technological Divide
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Economic Growth and the Common Good - Towards a New Vision on Markets and Finance in the Age of Globalisation: The Technological DivideLuc Soete poses that, from a historical perspective, it remains surprising how the two largest countries in the world, China and India, saw their share of world population and GDP fall continuously over the period 1820 - 1973. In 1820, these two countries represented well over half the world population and just under half world GDP. In 1973, the share of world population had dropped to 37% and the share of world GDP to a mere 7.7%.
It could be argued that this inequality in world GDP caused the focus on strengthening domestic technological competitiveness as key factor for a country?s future economic growth. The fact that this national-territorial obsession resulted in a predominantly ?inward-looking? knowledge view is still strongly reflected in most national research and innovation policies. Yet, the global challenges confronting citizens in developed, emerging and developing countries from climate, food and water to the financial crisis, call for shared solutions in the creation of new knowledge and the diffusion of existing knowledge addressing those problems.
Professor Soete distinguishes between two policy challenges: the first will be referred to as ?recherche sans frontières?; the second as ?innovation for local development?. A third point for debate will be to what extent the financial crisis, with its dramatic surge in (global) risk aversiveness, offers new opportunities for new, more trust based local knowledge investments.
Partners of these lecture series are among others Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NCDO, ISS, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Utrecht University, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Worldconnectors, Socires and Maastricht University?.