THE EMERGING IMPORTANCE OF KNOWLEDGE FOR DEVELOPMENT - IMPLICATIONS FOR TECHNOLOGY POLICY AND INNOVATION

What new roles for science and technology policy emerge in the knowled ge-based economy we live in? This broad question was largely the motiv ation for the 1st International Conference on Technology Policy and In novation (ICTPI), held in Macau in July 1997. Some of the important co ntributions to this conference are gathered in this special issue. The aim of this introductory article is to describe the background of cur rent research in the area of science and technology policy, to summari ze the contributions to this special issue, and to issue calls for new policy research. While the contributions to this special issue are di verse in terms of methodological approaches, units of analysis, and di sciplinary fields, we try to integrate some important conclusions of t he background analysis, suggesting further avenues for policy research , namely: (1) balancing innovation and diffusion; (2) beyond the exclu dability of software; (3) deepen the conceptual framework established through the interactive models of innovation; (4) promoting wetware an d software interaction; and (5) the need for an inclusive development. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.