Session organisers:

• Zoran Aralica (The Institute of Economics, Croatia)
• Bruno Škrinjarić (The Institute of Economics, Croatia)
• Anita Harmina (The Institute of Economics, Croatia)

Description:

The concept of technological transformation refers to how an economy changes in terms of technology use. The current technological transformation is tightly connected with Industry 4.0 transformation and it is happening within the fifth technological revolution named Age of Information and Technology (Perez, 2010). The technological transformation occurs in two main domains; the first is Technology invention domain i.e., the domain where new ideas are invented and commercialised in the market and the second is Technology adoption domain where technologies diffuse, i.e., manufacturing sector and/or service sector (Capello et al. 2020). While it is obvious that technological transformation is shaping the innovation environment, there are only a few references which deal with the measurement of the technological transformation. Therefore, for this special session we invite the contributions about technological transformation related to industry 4.0 and the contributions about how current technological transformation affects innovation.

Main topics:

• Sources and types of technological transformation
• Measuring of technological transformation
• Geography of technology adoption and its impact on innovation
• How 4.0 technology transformation shapes new islands of innovation in Europe?
• Nation- and region-specific nature of technological transformation
• Stages, degree and trends in 4.0 technologies adoption

References:

Capello et al. (2020) Territorial Trends in Technological Transformation, Final Report. ESPON 2020. https://www.espon.eu/sites/default/files/attachments/Synthesis%20Report_0.pdf

Perez, C., (2010) Technological revolutions and techno-economic paradigms, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34, 185–202 doi:10.1093/cje/bep051