Dual Innovation Systems. Francois-Xavier Meunier

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СКАЧАТЬ et al. 2011). In other terms, defense systems combine technologies that, taken individually, are used by both defense and civilian sectors, but associate them in an original manner.

      This distribution of knowledge between defense and civilian sectors obviously evolves depending on the various technical systems developed and on the innovations they generate. A proper understanding of duality requires the consideration of temporal dynamics. Duality should be considered at the very beginning of a product life, namely during the research phase, and should obviously stop during the development phase (Gagnepain 2001).

Given that duality is not a constant phenomenon, then the period, phase and moment during which it is manifest should be identified. Alic et al. (1992) offer a first macrolevel approach of this dynamics explaining, for semiconductors, the reversal of the direction of spin-offs between the civilian and military sectors by the domination of military demand in the 1980s and, afterwards, by a domination of civilian demand. This made the military sector dependent on civilian innovation, as it is the latter that mainly directs R&D efforts in this field.

      In the 1990s, Foray (1990) and Chesnais (1993) noted a transformation in the relation between civilian R&D and military R&D. Foray highlighted the weakening of the role of military R&D in the increase of industrial productivity and pointed out the following two factors:

       – the distortion of the scientific and technical system related to the technical specificities of the military material. As such, they highlighted the operational nature of R&D programs financed by defense, which favors the development expenditure as well as a strong product instead of process orientation of these programs;

       – the end of the four types of spin-offs identified by Mowery and Rosenberg (1991): direct effects (commercial application of technologies directly issued from defense), second-order effects (only one part of technology is embedded, either in a material form or as knowledge), effects related to research (reflected in knowledge dissemination) and organizational effects (for example, through a community of researchers); these disappear with the end of the generic nature of technologies.

      Based on this observation, Foray recommends two organizational transformations: on the one hand, organizing the increasing dependence of military technology on civilian R&D and, on the other hand, promoting the idea of defense financing for civilian programs, as a guarantee for their development. In the particular case of France, the upstream study programs are presented as one of the means of “insertion of defense R&D policies in global technological policies” (Foray and Guichard 2001). It is the interaction of these programs with the other devices that should be considered, in view of its role as an instrument of duality.

      Besides these long-term dynamics, a microanalysis facilitates the understanding of short-term dynamics. From an evolutionary perspective, the dual potential of a technology varies in time, and also depends on the type of R&D program (Cowan and Foray 1995).

First, the time variation: the notion of a technology lifecycle (Utterback and Abernathy 1975; Abernathy 1978) highlights two phases (experimentation then standardization) during which the dual potential evolves. The experimentation phase has the highest potential, while standardization brings down dual potential. Indeed, during the experimentation phase, potential applications of technology are not yet clearly identified, and therefore they may appear interesting to both civilians and militaries. But jointly conducted research may speed up the timetable; this means that actors in the defense sector and those in the civilian sector conduct tests together and thus accelerate the technology maturing process. They can also save time in terms of the “event”, by conducting a higher number of tests before the standardization phase. Thus they reach a higher level of technology maturity within the same lapse of time (Cowan and Foray 1997).

      During the standardization phase, the application domains require specific adaptation to the defense case or to the civilian case (norms, regulations, etc.). Each application caries on developments that lead to technological trajectories diverging between the two domains, and reduce the number of potential collaborations.

      Then, things depend on the type of project: once more, according to Cowan and Foray, the potential of a product-oriented project is not the same and does not evolve at the same pace as the potential of a process-oriented project. A product-oriented project has a lower dual potential, as it is limited by demands specific to the application domain. Moreover, the standardization phase strongly reduces this potential even further. A process-oriented project is, on the other hand, less limited by the civilian or military specificities and the standardization phase can be at least in part jointly conducted, leading to civilian and military convergence on the implementation of the technology.

      In this approach, duality is perceived as a mechanism for the joint production of technology. Organizing R&D according to duality principles would then enable a larger number of potential applications, the delay of standardization-related technology lock-in and consequent preservation of technology variety.

On the other hand, other research according to the technology lifecycle has proved that defense may show renewed interest in technologies after their standardization in the civilian sector, and thus revive their dual potential (Sachwald 1999). Duality is perceived here as a spin-in getting close to the off-the-shelf purchase practice within a cost reduction policy.

      A last note on temporality is worth making in relation to the life time of a defense program, and particularly to its maintenance in operational conditions (MOC). This characteristic of defense programs increases the complexity of the civilian–defense relation. Indeed, even if, as underlined by Droff (2013), in MOC duality facilitates the proximity between civilian and military activities, the fact remains that, due to regulatory and operational constraints of military MOC, manufacturers have to maintain competences and technologies for a very long time after their development. In these types of activities, duality is related to transfers or to the provision of equipment adequate for a given territory.

Figure 1.1. Technology cycle and dual potential. (a) Product-oriented; (b) process-oriented (source: Cowan and Foray 1995, p. 858)

Given these considerations on the temporal dimension, a priori knowledge on the applications of a technology in the future seems unlikely, as the majority of them have multiple uses (Sachwald 1999). In addition to temporality, some consider that future applications of a technology depend in particular on the social network in which it is developed or used (Cowan and Foray 1995; Kulve and Smit 2003). In innovation sociology, the notion of collaboration between network actors is essential for the economic dynamics. The concepts of techno-economic networks (Callon 1991) or sociotechnical networks (STN) (Elzen et al. 1996) point out this aspect; they are also the source of inspiration for the approaches of duality that place the collaborations between actors at the core of the analysis (Kulve and Smit 2003). Their main contribution is that the study of duality is no longer focused on technologies, but on the networks in which they emerge. The characteristics of these networks are susceptible to facilitating dual development. The idea of a temporality in the dual potential, as advanced by Cowan and Foray, is preserved, together with the idea of transfer mechanisms specific to each situation.

      This approach inspires the most recent works on duality and the innovation system perspective is nowadays often preferred for the integration of these network effects in the analysis (Guichard 2004a; Guichard and Heisbourg 2004; Mérindol 2004; Serfati 2008; Bellais 2014). The system set-up, animation and organization are presented in this context as essential challenges of dual technological innovation.

      The approaches in terms of innovation system do not fit the “outdated perspective of technical change that is taking place quasi-autonomously from the rest СКАЧАТЬ