International Competitiveness in Nanotechnology

One of the class ive enrolled in the second semester is International Competitiveness by Professor Marcella Miozzo. In this course, prof Miozzo discuss how firms, organization and countries achieve international competitiveness / global leadership through innovation. Ive also learned a lot of about strategy and the history of industrialization in developed and newly develop countries in this class.

For group coursework, i need to present international competitiveness in the case of nanotechnology. The task is very interesting and challenging because prior to this i know nothing about nano tech. After several weeks of digging Scopus papers, reading science magazine and collaborating through Google Slides, me and my team delivered the topic in the class yesterday. We present the history of nanotechnology development, international competitiveness using research indicators also case studies of three leading countries in nanotechnology. Due to over excitement, we overshoot the presentation time by over half an hour however the response was good.

In this post, im embedding the presentation slides along with several highlights from the materials that i referenced. Due to the way we split the work, im putting only the materials related to nanotechnology in the context of China. For the completion of this work, i would like to thank my awesome team mates which coincidentally both of them are Chevening scholars : fellow Indonesians Yoanita Simanjuntak and Pakistani aspiring economist Aisha Aurakzai.

Third world countries, represent!.

Notes and Appendix

China’s emerging presence in nanoscience and nanotechnology A comparative bibliometric study of several nanoscience‘s giants – Research Policy 2007

Jiancheng Guan∗,1, Nan Ma1

• Nanotechnology is believed to be one of key technologies of 21st centuries which will create new market and prosperity
• Japan and China put nanotechnologies in their long term plan
• China has been the only country to have its publication grow exponentially while the others show decreasing trends over the last two decade

• Japan has surpassed Germany by taking the second position since 1996.
• The number of publications from the USA decreased from 1993 to 2000, but the indicator shows its relative stability thereafter.
• The rise of nanotech in China is related to increased funding. The government spent 27 USD mio during 1990 – 2002
• Five countries in our present study are also the major partners with each other in the international collaborative network. The USA is the first choice for the four other countries to cooperate with. China has followed Germany and Japan to become the USA’s third largest partner in nanoscience research.

• Most of nano tech research are conducted in universities. China has taken one third of the top 15 positions among prolific institutions.  It seems that China has effectively used its public-sector research potential to boost the esearch activities in the country.

• In conclusion, global research activities on nano technologies has been increased over the last 20 years. China has emerged as major contributors in this field having exponential growth for publication in the same timespan.

Ascent of Nanoscience in China – ScienceMag 2005

Chunli Bai

• Interest for Nanoscience began in the 1980s. the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and the State Science and Technology Commission (SSTC) began funding nanoscience-related work and activities. Starting with the development of scanning-tunneling microscopy to view nanomaterial surface
• In 1990s, several international science conferences was held in China including 7th International Conference on Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (1993) and the 4th International Conference on Nanometer-Scale Science and Technology (1996). These meeting sparked public interest further in nanotech

• In, 1999, Ministry of Science and Technology started nanotech basic research project. Nanotech also included in National High Technology Plan. From 1990 – 2002, 1000 nanotech project was funded (approximately 27 Mio dollar investment).
• In 2000, National Steering Committee for Nanoscience and Nano tech was established. This government body oversee national policy and planning in this area.
• Increasing public interest also create problem, several unethical business falsely claimed that their product implemented nanotechnology. To prevent this, government set up National Standardization for Nanomaterials in 2004.
• Moving forward, the government wants to further pursue nanotech development by promoting and facilitating interdisciplinary research

The evolution of science-based business: innovating how we innovate

Gary P. Pisano*

Alfred Chandler core proposition on organizational and technological innovation

• Technological and organizational innovation are interdependent
  • The right institutional arrangements plays critical role in facilitating technical advancement and diffusion of innovation (Nelson and Winter, 1982)
  • Technological innovation is tightly intertwined with organizational and institutional innovation
• New forms of business organization and institutional arrangement are invented to solve specific economic problem
  • Organizational form, management technique and institutions are inventions which made to response to very specific economic problems
• Organizational and institutional innovation is an evolutionary process

Science-based business as a novel organizational form

• Division of labor between science and business. Science  happens in university while business in corporations
  • Academics vs Manager
• By the 20th century, these worlds were converging.
  • Universities saw applied research  as important as scientific research
  • Corporate invested in research laboratories capable of pursuing leading edge science

Networks as sponges: International collaboration for developing nanomedicine in China

Ricky C. Leung

Benefits of networks in innovation

• Increase actors information search capacity (Granovetter, 1973)
• Creativity (Powell et al., 1996),
• Productivity (Fernandez et al., 2000)

Networks as sponges

• Provide opportunities for organizational actors to engage in learning by doing
• Network partners of unequal power benefits differently

International Networks and Nanotechnology in China

• China has experience long history of economic underdevelopment
  • Political conflicts
  • Cultural Revolution
• Due to this, political leaders extremely eager to strengthen the country. Science and technology development has always been a top priority item in China national developmental plan. China leaders has expressed strong sentiments to be a world leader in high-tech science
  • Investment in scientific research increased steadily
• Nanotechnology is believed is new to everyone hence China could be on par with others more easily
• To engage, in a new science that requires high level of R&D, Chinese governments believe that collaborative and knowledge networks – particularly ties with overseas Chinese universities can be very useful
• Government provided funding for forging international partnerships and international collaboration in nanotech
• However Chinese scientist affiliated with academic institute of low status had to overcome barrier to publish in Euro-American journal. Hence China academic institute sought to raise their status by partnering with  high-status ones.

Network benefit metaphors

• Pipes : Amount of resources acquired
• Prisms : Level of reputation acquired
• Sponges : Degree of learning made possible

Trends in worldwide nanotechnology patent applications: 1991 to 2008

Yan Dang • Yulei Zhang • Li Fan • Hsinchun Chen • Mihail C. Roco

• Patent by institution

• Patent by area