| The dissertation addresses whether national technological trajectories persist in the face of increasing economic globalization in the biotechnology industries. First, the use and commercialization of genetic engineering techniques are shown to vary significantly in three countries--the U.S., Japan, and France--indicating the existence of national technological trajectories. Technological trajectories, it is proposed, vary because the institutional environment in which firms choose technology strategies is distinct. National institutions--the financial system, research and education system, regulatory environment, intellectual property rights system--set up incentives and constraints which narrow the set of strategies open to firms. Firms from different national environments face different incentives and choose, therefore, different strategies for the use and commercialization of biotechnologies.;Second, the dissertation demonstrates that national technological trajectories persist in spite of the internationalization of technology and investment. The internationalization strategies of companies from different countries (their use of foreign direct investment, international strategic alliances, and licensing agreements), indicate that globalization is not a unitary phenomenon driving firms and countries toward the creation of a homogenous, liberal intemational economy. Rather, in the biotechnology-related industries there is more than one type of globalization, and that globalization is a strategy choice made by individual firms, dictated both by the competencies of the national firms and their foreign partners. The direction of technology transfer in biotechnology has predominantly been from the United States to Japan and Europe, but the types of alliances chosen by Japanese and European firms are not the same because the two countries' industries have different initial competencies. The ultimate purpose of the dissertation is to demonstrate that the institutional economic environment is very important to firm behavior and that no matter how "global" the international economy becomes, the most important incentives for innovation and change are domestically located. |
