Technological development : the historical experience
Vernon, Raymond
During the past few decades a considerable number of developing countries have managed to chalk up impressive records of social and economic growth. In some cases rich endowments of raw materials have helped in the process. For the most part, however, success has depended on the capacity of the people in the developing country to absorb and apply the technologies that the more advanced countries had already created and put in place. Scholars have long realized that a nation's capacity to absorb and apply foreign technology is a critical factor in its growth, and they have undertaken many studies aimed at increasing an understanding of that process. This volume attempts to set down the principal lessons that these studies suggest. The first chapter draws its lessons from history. It explores the reasons for the unheralded and unanticipated emergence of Great Britain in the early nineteenth century as the world's industrial leader, and it reviews the factors that allowed the United States, Germany, Russia, and Japan to challenge that leadership in later decades. The lessons that emerge appear just as relevant for developing countries today as they were a century ago. The second chapter attempts to extract from a large, diverse literature the lessons to be learned from developing countries' experiences since the end of World War II in the adaptation and application of existing technologies.
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