On Search of a General Model of Technology Innovation

This work has the objective to present a general model of technology innovation considering technology as a separated discipline from scientific research and economy. That is justified by the fact that many technologies have been developed without economic purposes but after generating technologies with a great economic importance, and that there are limits to the study of fundamentals of technology only from an economic point of view. The study defines some principles that are at the base of technology and of its innovation. These principles lead to a model considering technology as a time-oriented structure of technological operations, and allowing the definition of concepts such as technological space, technological landscape and space of technologies. From this model it is possible to explain various technological processes including the nature of knowhow and the transfer of technology. The model then defines three organizational structures for innovation concerning the industrial R&D project, the startup-venture capital and the industrial platform systems, and then the stages of the innovation process. It follows the development of a model of technology innovation of a territory, based on loops of fluxes of knowledge and capitals, and in which these three organizational structures are in action. Applications of the general model of technology innovation concern the relation between science and technology, the technological competitivity, the relation between R&D investments and growth, new possible statistical studies, the relation between technology and the environment and the importance of intermediate scientific and technical education. The work terminates giving a perspective of evolution of the organizational structures for innovation toward a system of industrial platforms network.