Cristiano Antonelli and Michel Quéré, The Governance of the Generation and Dissemination of Localized Technological Knowledge, Fondazione Rosselli, senza data, http://www.fondazionerosselli.it/

Cristiano Antonelli (Laboratorio di Economia dell’Innovazione Franco Momigliano, Università di Torino e Fondazione Rosselli) e Michel Quéré (CNRS-IDEFI)

Major changes have occurred in the economic understanding of knowledge in the second part of the XX century. Knowledge has been first regarded as a typical public good that markets and profit-seeking agents could not produce in the appropriate quantities and with the appropriate characteristics. These theoretical ingredients paved the way to the setting-up of the appropriate infrastructure for the public provision of knowledge. However, a progressive identification of the central role of external knowledge in the production of new knowledge marks the second step. It largely contrasted the public good character of knowledge with a new argument about the quasi-private nature of technological knowledge. The ‘discovery’ of the knowledge trade-off stressed the key role of its dissemination and the limitations of the intellectual property rights. […]

KNOWLEDGE AS A PUBLIC GOOD

In these approaches, technological knowledge was seen as a public good for the high levels of indivisibility, non-excludability, non-tradability and hence non-appropriability. In this context, markets fail to provide the necessary coordination and the case for undersupply takes place. Markets are not able to provide the appropriate levels of knowledge because of the lack of incentives, and the opportunities for implementing the division of labor and hence achieving adequate levels of specialization. In these approaches, technological knowledge was the eventual result of the application of new scientific discoveries. A clear division of labor was existing between the role of universities and corporations. Universities and public research center were thought to be better equipped to perform scientific research. Instead, the eventual application of scientific discoveries for the actual generation of technological knowledge and the introduction of technological innovations was assigned to corporations. […]

KNOWLEDGE AS A PROPRIETARY GOOD

A major shift in the economics of knowledge took place when the notion of knowledge as a public good has been challenged by considering knowledge as a quasi-private good with higher levels of natural appropriability, exclusivity and hence tradability (Nelson and Winter, 1982). The distinction between tacit and codified knowledge provides in fact the foundation to the new approach to technological knowledge (Nelson and Winter, 1982). More, taking into account the combination of an epistemological and ontological dimensions of knowledge has been thought of as a necessity in order to understand the dynamic nature of knowledge creation as well as the related implications in terms of relevant organizational structures to manage that character of quasi-private good (Nonaka, Takeuchi, 1995).

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