There has been a major change in the perspectives on technology policy in the last couple of years. Most importantly it has been explicitly recognised that the key resource is knowledge and that it is the learning capabilities of people, firms and and national systems which dictate their relative economic success. In 1993, the European Commission in its White paper on ‘Growth, competitiveness and employment’ gave high priority to the need to reinforce the knowledge base and to invest in information infrastructures (CEC 1993. p. 10 et passim). At the G7-meeting in Detroit in March 1994 president Clinton and his advisors emphasised the need to create new high quality jobs through a strengthening of the knowledge base and investing in education, research and innovation.

As a follow-up to this meeting the OECD secretariat was asked to analyse the role of technology and technology policy in relation to productivity and employment. The first major report responding to this request (OECD, 1996a) takes the shift in perspective one step further by-arguing explicitly that OECD countries are in the midst of entering a new-growth regime where knowledge and learning has become crucial for economic performance. It is also stated that in this new growth regime technology policy, including policies related to information and communication technology, becomes more important than before. Part of the reason why OECD governments have begun to take these areas more seriously is that the room for manoeuvre and effectiveness within other policy areas such as macroeconomic policy and labour market policy are becoming increasingly reduced. But it is mainly because knowledge, learning and information play an ever important role in economic development.