Innovation in the automotive sector of the Philippines
The performance of the Philippine automotive industry has steadily improved following the Asian financial crisis. However, relative to the performance of the automotive industry in other countries, the sector has languished. To understand the challenges being faced by the automotive assemblers, as well as parts and components manufacturers, the innovation capability and activities of selected establishments are analysed following the framework developed by J. Bessant. This paper finds that despite having an awareness of the importance of technology and upgrading, some of the automotive firms are not able to translate this awareness into other technology activities.
Assessing the Competitiveness of the Philippine Auto Parts Industry
The development of the Philippine automotive parts and components sector is critical to the automotive assembly industry. The availability of competitive parts and components that are locally manufactured can significantly contribute to boost the competitiveness of the assembly sector. Given the current state of small and medium manufacturers, making them internationally competitive and linking them with regional production networks are major challenges. Less competitive firms will have to contend with reduced market shares and eventually bankruptcy. The few remaining competitive ones need to define their strategies and the market position that they want to pursue. The government has an important role to play in the firms adjustment process. While increasing economic integration represent market opportunities; penetrating the export market is not easy and does not come automatically. As the firms search for internal ways and exert effort to improve their competitiveness, this must be complemented with active government support.
Technological Learning Systems, Competitiveness and Development
Este artigo tem por objetivo contribuir para a compreensao das principaisespecificidades dos processos de desenvolvimento tecnologico das economiasretardatarias. Segundo esta compreensao, sao investigadas as razoes pelas quais asmedidas convencionais de politicas de Ciencia e Tecnologia (C&T), normalmenteinspiradas no chamado modelo linear e na teoria economica neoclassica, nao saogeralmente apropriadas ou suficientes para os paises em desenvolvimento. Isto aconteceporque os retardatarios competem basicamente com base na imitacao e nao com baseem produtos ou processos inovadores. Esta caracteristica de seus processos tecnologicosos obriga a recorrer ao uso de mao-de-obra barata, a protecao estatal ou a exploracaopredatoria de recursos naturais como forma de compensar suas produtividades iniciaisrelativamente baixas. Os casos de quatro paises retardatarios ? Brasil, Mexico, Coreiado Sul e Taiwan ? sao brevemente analisados. Nas ultimas duas decadas, estes quatropaises elevaram grandemente suas participacoes na producao cientifica mundial.As duas economias asiaticas tambem foram capazes de obter elevacoes muito grandesem suas participacoes na producao tecnologica mundial, assim como reduziremgrandemente os hiatos de produtividade e renda per capita que as separam da economiaindustrial lider, os Estados Unidos. As duas economias latino-americanas, no entanto,seguiram na direcao oposta. Tal fato coloca em xeque o pressuposto do modelo linearde que haveria uma relacao mais ou menos direta entre o nivel da producao deconhecimento cientifico de um pais e sua producao de tecnologias ou inovacoes.O artigo conclui-se com apresentacao de algumas implicacoes desta analise para aspoliticas de C&T de paises em desenvolvimento. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the main specificities oflatecomers` processes of technological development. Building on the basis of thisunderstanding, it searches for the reasons why the conventional measures of Scienceand Technology (S&T) policies, usually inspired by the so-called linear model and byneoclassical economics, are frequently inappropriate or insufficient for developingeconomies. This is so because latecomers compete primarily by imitating, rather thanby innovating. Such feature of their technological processes compels them to rely oncheap labor, on state protection or natural resources depletion as a way tocompensate for its relatively low initial productivity. The cases of four latecomers ?Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan ? are briefly analyzed. During the last twodecades, all these four countries were successful in greatly increasing their shares ofworld scientific productions. The two Asian economies were also able to achieve verylarge increases in their shares of world technological productions, greatly shrinkingthe productivity and per capita income gaps that separate them from the levels of theleading industrial economy, the US. The two Latin-American economies, however,went in the opposite direction on those respects. Such fact put into question thelinear model`s assumption of a more or less direct connection between a country`sscientific achievements and its technological production or innovation performance.The paper is concluded by presenting some implications of its analysis for S&Tpolicies for developing economies.