The Patterns and Impact of Technological Specialization

The findings of the previous Chapters have described the process of specialization in science and technology in advanced countries. Quantitative data on several S&T indicators and databases have been used to examine the trends of the 1970s and 1980s at national and at sectoral level. This Chapter will pull together and summarize the different threads of the analysis and go on to examine the relationship between specialization and national performance. After the analysis in the previous Chapters of the specialization profiles of advanced countries in technology and science and the data provided on the degree of specialization in countries and sectors, the concluding questions to be addressed focus on the different national patterns of technological specialization and on the impact they have on national performance. In particular, two issues will be examined: i)The first question is: how can the similarities and differences in national patterns of technological activity be defined? Are there common patterns across countries emerging from the comparison of national sectoral specialization?