Learning, Capability Building and Innovation for Development

Today, a large number of scholars studying development understand this process as involving learning and capability building. Capability building is an active, not a passive, process. It requires a purposeful effort from the learner's side, with support and commitment on allocation of time and resources toward learning activities. This process implies the possibility of failure as well as success, as we also learn from failures. A global cast of academics and policy makers examines economic development as a process of learning and technological accumulation, showing how economic development is a process involving creative destruction. While markets and market competition play major roles in structuring the development process, non-market institutions and government policies matter.

Gabriela Dutrénit is Professor of Economics and Innovation Management at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico, and she is currently the President of Mexico's Advisory Forum on Science and Technology, an advisory organism of STI policies to the government.

Alexandre O. Vera-Cruz is Professor of the Master and PhD programs in Economics and Management of Innovation at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico.

Keun Lee is Professor of Economics at Seoul National University, South Korea, and Director of the Center for Economic Catch-up. He is a co-editor for Research Policy, the managing editor of Seoul Journal of Economics, and President of the Asia-Pacific Innovation Network.

Luc Soete is Director of the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance of Maastricht University, Netherlands. He is a member of the Board of the Maastricht School of Management (MSM) and the Belgian media company Concentra.

Richard R. Nelson is Professor of Economics at Columbia University, USA. He is currently the George Blumenthal Professor Emeritus of International and Public Affairs, Business, and Law, and the director of the Program on Science, Technology and Global Development at Columbia's The Earth Institute. He is also a part-time faculty in the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR, formerly known as PREST), University of Manchester.

1.Introduction; Gabriela Dutrénit, Keun Lee, Richard Nelson, Luc Soete and Alexandre O. Vera-Cruz
2. The Generation of Domestic Technological Capabilities: Measuring the Impact of the Contributions of Jorge Katz; Gabriela Dutrénit
3. The Latin American Structuralist School and the Innovation Systems Perspective: Jorge Katz, Learning and Micro and Macro Connections; José E. Cassiolato, Helena Lastres and Flávio Peixoto
4. The Significance of Jorge Katz's Work for the Understanding of Learning and Technological Capability Building in Developing Countries; Alexandre O. Vera-Cruz and Arturo Torres Vargas
5. 'Old and New' Approaches to Innovation Policy: a Systems Evolutionary (S/E) Perspective; Morris Teubal
6. Industrial Productivity in Developing Nations; Howard Pack
7. Productivity and Firm Heterogeneity in Chile; Gustavo Crespi
8. Developing Competing Capabilities in the Argentinean Industry (1958-2008); Bernardo Kosacoff
9. Micro-Macro Interactions in Technological Learning and Growth; Mario Cimoli & Gabriel Porcile
10. The Social Dimension of Behaviour: Macroeconomic Uncertainty and Firms' Investment in R&D and in Machinery in Argentina; Valeria Arza
11. Macro, Meso and Micro Coordination and Technological Progress: Catch Up Experiences of Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation; Rajah Rasiah
12. Knowledge Regimes and Technological Catch-up; Keun Lee
13. Catching Up in the 21st Century: Globalization, Knowledge and Capabilities in Latin America, a Case for Natural Resource Based Activities; Michiko Iizuka and Luc Soete
14. Past Innovation trajectories in Latin America and current innovation trajectories in China; Raphael Kaplinsky