Sectoral systems of innovation and varieties of capitalism: explaining the development of high-technology entrepreneurship in Europe

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511493270.011

10 - Sectoral systems of innovation and varieties of capitalism: explaining the development of high-technology entrepreneurship in Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009

Steven Casper and

David Soskice

Edited by

Franco Malerba

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Steven Casper: Affiliation:
Keck Graduate Institute, Claremont, California
David Soskice: Affiliation:
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Franco Malerba: Affiliation:
Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Milan

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Summary

Introduction

The national institutional framework of the United States' economy has proven favorable to the expansion of high-technology industries. Since the early 1980s the US economy has evolved to support a dramatic expansion in biotechnology, software, and a variety of other fast-moving high-tech activities with close links to basic science. In particular, the institutional framework of the United States has evolved to provide ever more venture capital to high-risk start-up companies, to develop new links between university scientists and companies, and to encourage – or, at least, not hinder – the reorganization of large companies for exploiting commercial opportunities in high technology. In Western Europe firms and policy makers are anxiously experimenting with their own institutional structures in an attempt to support science-based high-tech innovation in their own country better.

This chapter explores the influence of national institutional frameworks on the evolution (using the sectoral systems of innovation approach) of high-tech industries in Europe, focusing in particular on recent public policy and private sector initiatives to foster larger numbers of entrepreneurial technology start-up firms. Our analysis draws on extensive field research within biotechnology and software – two of the most important sectoral systems' new technologies, in which the creation of entrepreneurial start-ups is widespread. The study elaborates and then applies arguments associated with two conceptual approaches: the SSI framework, developed within this book to examine innovative dynamics within particular industries; and the “varieties of capitalism” approach (Hall and Soskice, 2001), which has explored the influence of national institutional frameworks on patterns of industrial organization within particular countries.

Type: Chapter
Information: Sectoral Systems of Innovation
Concepts, Issues and Analyses of Six Major Sectors in Europe
, pp. 348 - 387

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511493270.011 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2004

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