Learning New Technologies by SMEs: Mechanisms and Trajectories

In successful firms, firm-level capabilities would comprise core and ‘general-purpose technologies’ (GPTs) competencies. The corollary is that successful firms would in turn possess both GPTs and firm-specific skills. The range of GPTs include mechanical engineering and arguably the most pervasive to date, ICTs (Rosenberg, 1994). These technologies are required for, and in fact are indispensable to, the operation of the core routines of organizations. For instance, mechanical engineering is as crucial to the automobile industry as biotechnological skill is key to pharmaceuticals and foods industries. The advent of microelectronics has not only deepened the systemic complexity of all industries, but also revolutionized the nature of industrial organization. Major technological advances in ICTs have caused significant changes in manufacturing; ICTs underlie many of the observed patterns of process and product innovation across industries. At the centre of the manufacturing changes, with significant implications for processing speed as well as flexibility of production and high precision, is the progressive inclusion of microelectronics. While many of these advances have originated in advanced industrial economies, developing countries have taken advantage of these new technologies by building up industrial capabilities through sustained and explicit learning.