SciDev.Net

This document attempts to inform and re-invigorate the debate on international technology transfer. The author, John H. Barton at Stanford School of Law, argues for the need to revisit this issue in line with the recognition that economic activities are more globalised than they were in the 1970s, and developing countries have greater scientific and technological capacities.

Barton focuses on three mechanisms of international technology transfer: the flow of human resources; the flow of public-sector technology support; and the flow of private technology from multinational corporations to developing countries. He recommends ways to remove barriers to each. He argues for greater mobility within, and globalisation of, the world’s scientific enterprise and reasserts an economic rationale for investing in public-sector research in developing countries.

The paper is likely to be useful to developing country policymakers interested in intellectual property rights, trade and development, as well as scientists and technologists more generally.

This study uses empirical data to analyse the extent to which technological spillovers occur as a result of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Argentina. It discusses why FDI is often assumed to be fundamental to human capital formation and technological development in developing countries.

The authors argue that FDI may not be the most effective instrument to foster technological development. They observe that FDI spillovers are not extensive and that they depend on multinational corporations' assets and investment decisions as well as domestic firms' absorptive capacity, as indicated by their investment in training and equipment.

One of the study's key conclusions is that only those firms that have invested heavily in improving their absorptive capacity will receive positive spillovers from FDI.

The authors suggest that governments must make broader efforts to promote local firms and science and technology organisations, and improve the links between these.

This study examines the role of science, technology and knowledge in development programmes.

Based on qualitative data collected from 14 donor agencies around the word, the author presents a summary of donors' science and technology activities and their supporting mechanisms associated with knowledge for development, including research support, capacity building and technology transfer.

This report discusses whether the TRIPS-Plus rules on pharmaceutical patents are likely to benefit the Thai pharmaceutical industry. It focuses on the expected impact on pharmaceutical product prices, research and development efforts and technology transfer including foreign direct investment.

The author argues that Thailand has limited technological capacity and that a stringent intellectual property rights regime such as the TRIPS-Plus will only protect research results developed elsewhere. In the Thai pharmaceutical industry, it will damage domestic research and development and limit the acquisition of foreign technologies.

The report includes recommendations for developing countries wishing to strengthen their current patent protection and improve their positions in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations.

This article examines technological catch-up — how developing countries build up their technological capabilities to compete with industrialised nations — and the implications for donor agencies providing technical assistance.

It looks at how the literature on links between economic growth and technological change has evolved and discusses how the concept of technological catch-up emerged.

The authors argue that technical assistance programmes should focus on supporting education and training systems and fostering links between developing and developed countries' science and technology organisations.

This report brings together articles on the globalisation of research and development (R&D) and its implications for developing countries.

Among the key issues examined are:

• the development potential of R&D funded by foreign direct investment (FDI);
• the impact of R&D-based FDI on technology transfer;
• the types of R&D that are beneficial to development; and
• policy interventions that can influence R&D-based FDI in developing countries.

The report reviews the growing number of multinational corporations' R&D activities in select developing countries and their driving forces. It discusses the importance of national policies in acquiring and originating countries as well as international ones.

The report is presented in four parts. The first discusses R&D's globalisation. The second introduces case studies from developing and transition countries. The third presents policy issues. And the last part is a collection of opinion articles.

A key conclusion of this report is that policy interventions can be fundamental to fostering and attracting R&D-based FDI to developing countries.

This World Investment Report examines the latest trends in foreign direct investment (FDI) and looks at how research and development (R&D) has become an international activity thanks to multinational corporations.

The report indicates that FDI flows grew in 2004, driven mainly by FDI to developing countries. It says that multinational companies' R&D in developing countries has become more complex, often going beyond local market adaptation to include activities that target global markets.

The report emphasises that countries receiving inflows of FDI must have coherent policies to promote beneficial R&D interactions between multinational corporations and domestic organisations.

This study examines technology transfer in the Nigerian oil industry, focusing on how the Nigerian National Petroleum Company acquires technologies and accumulates technological capabilities. It examines the training efforts used to master imported technologies and looks at how technical change affects the company's production and financial performance.

This paper examines how trade helps transfer knowledge to emerging economies. It reviews existing research and uses an analysis of patent statistics to track the spread of knowledge across 18 countries involved in bilateral trade.

The author argues that trade helps transfer technology across both countries and sectors, as seen by the positive relationship between trade activity and number of cites to foreign patents. But, he says, the extent to which knowledge is disseminated depends on cultural and historical proximities and the local technical capacity of acquiring countries.

This article examines the ways in which development aid is conceived and represented.

It presents the initial concept of technical assistance, and describes how it has shifted to include a more equal and interactive relationship between the giver and receiver in what is known as technical 'cooperation'.

The author also discusses the recent influence that knowledge management and innovation systems concepts have had on development assistance discourse and practice.

He adds that another shift is needed to incorporate situations where technology transfer stakeholders can jointly create knowledge, moving from a 'learning from' environment to a 'learning with' one.

This issue of the African Technology Development Forum Journal highlights technology transfer in Africa. In particular, it looks at the different ways technology is transferred to and from Africa, and how these vary across the continent. It discusses international organisations' role in agricultural technology transfer and examines how both international and local public-private partnerships can help transfer technology in all sectors of the economy.

This World Investment Report describes global trends in foreign direct investment (FDI), showing that the growth seen worldwide is largely due to cross-border mergers and acquisitions.

The report highlights the rise of FDI from developing and transition countries, examining the drivers and determinants of this phenomenon, the impact on originating and acquiring countries, and policy implications.

It argues that this rise is largely driven by multinational corporations from these countries that are becoming major players in the world economy.

This policy brief examines the importance of investment promotion agencies (IPAs), which endorse specific countries or locations to investors, in stimulating foreign direct investment (FDI). It discusses how policy incentives impact FDI and emphasises the importance of promoting investment opportunities in specific industries and businesses to match the interests of both the investors and the receiving country.

The brief describes the institutional characteristics of IPAs and considers how both their position within governments and their level of autonomy influence their ability to attract FDI. It concludes that an IPA's effectiveness depends on its political visibility, as well as on broader resources in the receiving country like market size, human capital and science and technology infrastructure.

This paper examines the accumulation of technological capabilities through interactive learning between foreign firms in South Africa and local businesses. It asks how collaborative learning can help develop technological capability and how it can be encouraged in South African industry.

The authors stress the role of trade policies in opening up the South African market, which has led to restructured industrial networks as firms improve or close down in the face of foreign competition. They conclude that the experience and capability of local multinational subsidiaries are key determinants of collaborative learning and that, although institutional support in South Africa is lacking, initiatives undertaken by individual firms can enhance learning among local businesses.

This paper examines the role of North-South partnerships in building scientific and technological capabilities in Africa. It reviews current definitions of North-South collaborations, provides new thinking on what such partnership's objectives should be, and presents case studies illustrating how partnerships in Africa have been developed on the ground.

The author stresses the importance of organisations beyond those involved in research and education and makes policy recommendations based on the evidence presented.

The role of developing countries in climate change mitigation has been and continues to be a contentious issue. Developing countries' emissions are predicted to surpass those of industrialised countries within the first half of this century, but no formal commitments to reduce emissions have been made.

This report, prepared for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, examines six countries — Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey — in the context of climate change mitigation. Ongoing efforts in these countries have helped reduce emissions, though not necessarily in the name of mitigating climate change.

The authors find that overall, over the past three decades, these countries have reduced the growth rate of their emissions by 300 million tonnes. The motivations for such efforts include poverty alleviation, economic development, energy security and local environmental protection. This demonstrates that climate change mitigation can and does occur in the context of development that aims to be sustainable.

This report is comprehensive for the countries studied. It is very accessible and likely to be of interest to anyone engaged in the debate about mitigation in the South.

The report is available in pdf format only. An executive summary is availably online here.

Technology transfer is considered instrumental in building capacity in developing countries, especially for meeting energy needs. This paper offers advice on how relationships between investors and communities can foster effective and efficient transfer of technologies.

Technology transfer must be relevant to local development; thus, community and business partners must establish their needs. The paper also illustrates how important assurance mechanisms, transaction costs and trust are in creating a successful technology transfer project. The key lessons include feasibility assessments, to minimise transaction costs while maximising assurance mechanisms, and to raise awareness of local politics.

There is growing recognition by the international community that developing countries need to obtain access to technologies via transfer from developed countries to be able to comply with the conditions set in a variety of international agreements. As a consequence, special provisions on technology transfers and capacity building have been incorporated in around 80 international agreements and several regional and bilateral instruments. This compendium prepared by UNCTAD summarises of existing provisions on technology transfer in multilateral, regional and bilateral agreements.

It states that although some progress has been made in implementing the provisions expressed in the agreements, a major gap remains between the intentions and their actual implementation. Therefore, the compendium intends to act as a reminder of the broad range of further policy that is necessary to reach the technology transfer objectives set in those commitments.

This paper by Linsu Kim contains an overview of South Korea's technological development and focuses on the interplay between technology transfer via various means such as licenses, reverse engineering and domestic technological learning efforts. The paper draws lessons on the impact of intellectual property rights on technological and economic development.

The paper confirms the findings of other recent studies that the impact of intellectual property rights (IPRs) on technology transfer and technological development will differ according to the levels of technological and economic development of different countries. The author concludes that there are four main lessons from the South Korean experience: first, strong IPRs will hamper rather than facilitate technology transfer and domestic learning in the initial stage of development when learning is based on reverse engineering and duplicative imitation of foreign technologies. Second, IPR protection only becomes a relevant element in technology transfer when countries have developed considerable domestic capabilities. Third, in order to contribute to development, the enforcement of IPRs should be differentiated according to level of economic development of countries and different industrial sectors. Fourth, developing countries should strive to change standardised multilateral IPR regimes and to guarantee more favourable IPR policies to them, while making efforts to enhance their absorptive capacity.

This paper has been prepared for the UNCTAD/ICTSD Capacity Building Project on Intellectual Property Rights and Sustainable Development by Sanjaya Lall from Oxford University. The paper discusses the impact of the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) — interpreted by the author as the tightening of intellectual property rights — on industrial and technological development, including technology transfers via foreign direct investment, capital goods imports and reverse engineering in developing countries.

The paper concludes that the jury is still out on the benefits of TRIPS for technological development in developing countries as a whole. It notes that there are significant variations both between rich and poor countries and among developing countries themselves in the factors — such as domestic technological effort, imports of foreign technology and industrial performance — that may affect the impact of TRIPS on technological development. Therefore, the application of TRIPS should take a differentiated approach according to the economic and technological differences among countries.