Some resources on technological innovation in development

Program on Science, Technology, and Global Development

This is a project of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. It appears to focus on three topics: 1. the changing role of international corporations and the pattern of interaction between international companies and indigenous ones; 2. the role of public research capabilities at universities and public laboratories in the catch-up process, and the extent to which these institutions are becoming increasingly important, both because of the greater importance today of scientific knowledge underpinning technologies; 3. the complex set of issues associated with the tightening of national and international patent regimes under TRIPs. The director of the project is Richard Nelson.

I found two interesting conferences run by the program, with presentations available on their websites:

• Access to Medicines and the Financing of Innovations in Health Care
• Innovation in the Life Sciences: Intellectual Property and Public Investment for Pharmaceuticals and Agriculture

The Earth Institute program and UNU-MERIT run the governance of science technology and innovation project:

A Program of Study of the Processes Involved in Technological and Economic Catch up. The catch-up project is aimed at illuminating the key mechanisms and institutions that, in the current world context, can enable nations behind the scientific and technological frontier to catch-up, and how the opportunities and obstacles to catch-up today differ from those that faced countries that caught up in an earlier era. The project involves a large network of researchers and research organizations in different countries, both developed and less developed. UNU-MERIT/Columbia Earth Institute partner on Catch-Up Project Key partners are:

• Richard R Nelson, Roberto Mazzoleni, John Cantwell -- Columbia Earth Institute;
  
• Calestous Juma – Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University;
  
• Nick von Tunzelmann -- SPRU, University of Sussex J. Stanley Metcalfe – CRIC, University of Manchester;
  
• Claude Henry – Ecole Polytechnique, and IDDRI, Paris;
  
• Bengt-Ake Lundvall – Department of Business Studies, Aalborg University; and
  
• Akira Goto – RCAST, University of Tokyo, and Research Institute of Economy, Trade, And Industry Hiroyuki Odagiri—COE-RES project, Hitotsubashi University

The Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development

CGSD manages the social sciences activities of the Earth Institute. Its mission is "to augment the intellectual community using social sciences approaches to address the most pressing international development problems of our time." This mission overlaps with those of social science departments across the Columbia University, with whose faculty CGSD staff collaborate. The hallmark of CGSD is interdisciplinary research and policy application. A partial list of its research programs includes:

• The Program on Science, Technology, and Global Development;
  
• The Center on Capitalism and Society (CCS),
  
• The Center for the Study of Science and Religion (CSSR);
  
• The Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD); and
  
• The Laboratory of Populations. The CGSD website includes publications which may be downloaded and links to events including presentations that may be downloaded.

The United Nations University Maastricht Economic and social Research and training center on Innovation and Technology

UNU-MERIT is a joint research and training center of United Nations University (UNU) and Maastricht University, The Netherlands. The joint Institute was created in January 2006 following the integration of the former UNU-Institute for New Technologies (INTECH) in Maastricht , and the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, MERIT, at Maastricht University. UNU-MERIT seeks to provide insights into the social, political and economic factors that drive technological change and innovation. The Center's research and training programs address a broad range of policy questions relating to the national and international governance of science, technology and innovation, with a particular focus on the creation, diffusion and access to knowledge.