Sectoral Systems for Agricultural Biotechnology

Abstract

The shift from the previous conception of knowledge production and use as something originating exclusively out of research and development (R&D) has been gradually replaced with the conception of knowledge utilization as the building of a national and sectoral innovation system. In this book, we adopt the concept of innovation capacity to describe the knowledge as well as the institutional structures in order to use scientific and technological knowledge for commercial products and processes. In other words, innovation capacity lies at the root of the systematic differential performances of countries and sectors and is responsible for the economic advancement of the more industrialized countries. We differentiate between countries that are traditionally associated with frontier knowledge and the rest. This book and its analysis is not about those at the frontier of technology and innovation, it is about those latecomer countries trying to catch up with the industrial leaders. In so doing we make a distinction between fast followers, latecomers, and very latecomers; terms that are fully described in subsequent sections.