Small Player Advantage in a New Game: Capturing Opportunity as Developing Countries from the New Globalism of Technology

Abstract

As the world moves towards the twenty-first century, developing nations are confronted with a complex and challenging paradigmatic shift in the way that technological process is becoming embedded in the globalised economic framework of development. There is a perceptible shift taking place from economic power being derived from nationally owned production facilities to economic power being derived from the national location of high value-added activities.

As developing countries are opening up, there is a greater incidence, than ever before, to transfer advanced technological processes and know-how to the developing partners as a part of the global networking strategies. As opposed to the earlier strategies, these new networking strategies seek to encourage establishment of locally based research, development and design facilities to meet both the local and inter- ndtional demand for increasingly sophisticated spectrum of products. Developing nations stand to capture and gain from these advantages provided their structures are equipped to bed these new knowledge capacities into their national technology strategies. There is a series of various factor advantages behind these new demands of economic competition.

At the heart of capturing value-added advantage from the new economic and technological order lies the whole spectrum of reordering the S&T skill base including the educational system which seeks to develop more strategically informed inter- and multidisciplinary S&T programmes. Entirely different principles of science and technology policies are implied which focus on the development and flow of people embedding national SBcT advance into aligned social and organisational strategies.

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