Classifying Technology Policy from an Evolutionary Perspective

In 1987 Ergas introduced the concepts of missionand diffusion-oriented policy designs to classify and analyse national systems of innovation. According to him, mission-oriented systems are characterised by centralisation and the concentration of policy support on a small number of technologies and larger firms, unlike diffusion-oriented systems which concentrate their policy efforts on increasing an economy’s capacity of innovating by concentrating on the scientific infrastructure, technology transfer and cooperation, i.e. formal and informal relationships between different actors etc. Although, on the one hand, we assume this taxonomy well-suited for analysing technology policy in an evolutionary context, on the other hand, it appears somewhat crude, especially regarding the characteristics Ergas identifies in order to assign a specific innovation system to one or the other policy design. To surmount these critics, we suggest to take a closer look at the specific policy measures applied. For this purpose we develop a new classification scheme, based on interviews with political representatives and suggesting four categories spread out between the technology side (high and low technological specificity) and the economic side (high and low market distance). This