This thesis explores Thailand's efforts to pursue greater competitiveness in global markets by enhancing the effectiveness of its National System of Innovation. The concept of national system of innovation (NSI) has been employed widely to study and describe the development of science, technology and innovation in a national context. NSI studies seek to explain systematic differences between national economies in their innovation performance in terms of the flow of knowledge among actors/players and the impacts of institutions and factors on their relationships or interactions. The concept was formally introduced into Thai policies in 2001 and it was adopted widely by the organisations directed to build up a strong national innovation system. However, the Thai innovation system has been identified by previous studies as a weak and fragmented system. This study investigates the current situation of the Thai NSI by exploring the relationships and the patterns of knowledge flows among actors in the Thai innovation system; heavily focusing on exploitation of public sector research. A comparative study was undertaken of innovations arising as a result of initiatives arising through the Thai NSI policy. Eighteen case studies were undertaken including 6 that were seen as successful and 12 failures. The study was carried out using in-depth interviews with relevant staff in both public and private sectors together with secondary analysis of science and technology policy implementation in Thailand. The interviews show that there are still many problems hindering the attempt to build up an effective relationship between the public and private sectors; many of them fail to construct R&D collaboration and to conduct technology transfer. The influential factors are analysed and identified from the cases. Those found repeatedly among successes, but largely absent in the failure cases include technological readiness, R&D capability, good management skills, and positive attitude towards R&D while some external factors are found specific to the individual case. Some of them can be contingent factors for particular features of the case resulting in diversity among the cases especially successful ones. The analysis of science and technology policy implementation is also integrated to explore the case studies in order to investigate the impact of those policies on the pattern of the Thai innovation system. Particularly, the policy that has been implemented after the introduction of the NSI concept which was intended to fix the linear model of innovation in Thailand. However, the analysis from this research demonstrates that there is a shortcoming in the adoption of the NSI policy in Thailand as it still follows the 'linear plus' model of innovation (Tait and Williams, 1999) revolving around promoting knowledge flows from research. The development of ST&I is embedded in the advanced science (most in the public sector) not for building up the competitive firms. The centre of development is not on firm capability development to create learning economies but on a science push model. To summarise from the empirical findings, the concept of NSI adopted in Thailand is used as a tool to briefly analyse the big picture of science and technology development at the national level and to identify the problems facing the country. However, this concept alone is not enough to stimulate a country's innovation process. The NSI concept has been understood in two broad ways: the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) mode and the Doing, Using and Interacting (DUI) mode. In Thailand the former has prevailed. Secondly, the concept itself is too broad and vague to be used as the main guideline for building up innovative capacity; it only tells what should be done not how to do it. The NSI helps Thailand to initiate change in its ST&I development process although greater attention should be given to the DUI mode. However, the process requires other frameworks to support and translate the NSI concept into the level of action plans. As a result this research suggests that the factors that determine the success of technology/knowledge transfer are not only from the policy level but also other factors from the bottom up level such as social factors determining the relationships among actors.

Yes / Technologies can help strengthen the resilience of our economy against existential climate-risks. We investigate climate change adaptation technologies (CCATs) in US patents to understand (1) historical patterns and possible drivers of innovation; (2) scientific and technological requirements to develop and use CCATs; and (3) CCATs’ potential technological synergies with mitigation. First, in contrast to mitigation, innovation in CCATs only slowly takes off, indicating a relatively low awareness of investors for solutions to cope with climate risks. We discuss how historical trends in environmental regulation, energy prices, and public support may have contributed to patenting in CCATs. Second, CCATs form two main clusters: science-intensive ones in agriculture, health, and monitoring technologies; and engineering-intensive ones in coastal, water, and infrastructure technologies. Analyses of technology-specific scientific and technological knowledge bases inform directions for how to facilitate advancement, transfer and use of CCATs. Lastly, CCATs show strong technological complementarities with mitigation as more than 25% of CCATs bear mitigation benefits. While not judging about the complementarity of mitigation and adaptation in general, our results suggest how policymakers can harness these technological synergies to achieve both goals simultaneously.

Technology to recover uranium from seawater may act as a potential backstop on the production cost of uranium in a growing international nuclear industry. Convincing proof of the existence of an effective expected upper limit on the resource price would have a strong effect on decisions relating to deployment of uranium resource consuming reactor technologies. This evaluation proceeds from a review of backstop technologies to detailed analyses of the production cost of uranium extraction via an amidoxime braid adsorbent system developed by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA). An independent cost assessment of the braid adsorbent system is developed to reflect a project implemented in the United States. The cost assessment is evaluated as a life cycle discounted cash flow model to account for the time value of money and time-dependent performance parameters. In addition, the cost assessment includes uncertainty propagation to provide a probabilistic range of uranium production costs for the braid adsorbent system. Results reveal that uncertainty in adsorbent performance (specifically, adsorption capacity, kg U/tonne adsorbent) is the dominant contributor to overall uncertainty in uranium production costs. Further sensitivity analyses reveal adsorbent capacity, degradation and production costs as key system cost drivers. Optimization of adsorbent performance via alternate production or elution pathways provides an opportunity to significantly reduce uranium production costs. Finally, quantification of uncertainty in production costs is a primary policy objective of the analysis. Continuing investment in this technology as a viable backstop requires the ability to assess cost and benefits while incorporating risk. / text

(English) The R&D management system was examined in terms of legislation, managing authorities, types of support, support providers, budget and strategic documents in this thesis. In the area of strategic documents, persistent shortcomings were revealed and manifested in non-specific interconnections or overlaps. At the same time, a qualitative shift in the quality of the documents was identified. Furthermore, it was examined whether the strategic measures for the development in the field of molecular biology were fulfilled in more detail. The research was carried out on data related to targeted support, which were obtained from the R&D Information System. Two periods in the years 1995-2014 were analyzed. The structure of the second period from 2005 to 2014 was related to the structure of the first period from 1995 to 2004, which served as a reference. In relation to strategic measures, research has shown that resources have been optimized, capacities have been strengthened and infrastructure has been massively developed. Keywords research, development, innovation, targeted support, R&D policy, molecular biology

The Thesis is composed by three complementary research investigations on the economic and policy aspects of EU corporate R&D.Collectively, the work first reviews the theoretical and empirical literature of corporate R&D intensity decomposition; it then investigates the EU R&D intensity and its decomposition elements comparatively with most closed competitors and with emerging economies over the period 2005-2013. Finally, it inspects further some key aspects that can be associated to the EU R&D intensity gap: sectoral dynamics and the resulting sectoral and technological specialisations as well as the drivers for R&D investment growth across sectors and firms' age groups of top R&D investing firms over time. These studies also address the possible policy implications that derive from their outcomes.The investigations rely on literature as well as on company data, mainly from nine editions (2006-2014) of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. For analytical purposes they use literature review, meta-analysis, descriptive statistics, R&D intensity decomposition computational approach, Manhattan distance and Technological Revealed Comparative Advantage metrics, and a multinominal logit regression model. The results of these three research works are novel in several aspects. It indicates that literature results on R&D intensity decomposition differ because of data and methodological heterogeneities, and that the structural cause is the main determinant of EU R&D intensity gap if sector compositions of the countries are considered. It inspects how the use of different data sources and analytical methods impact differently on R&D intensity decomposition results, and what the analytical and policy implications are.The empirical research results of this Thesis confirm the structural nature of the EU R&D intensity gap. In the last decade the gap between the EU and the USA has widened, whereas the EU gap with Japan has remained relatively stable. In contrast, the emerging countries' R&D intensity gap compared to the EU has remained relatively stable, while companies from emerging economies are considerably reducing such gap. Besides, as novel contribution to the state of the art of the literature, this Thesis uncovers the differences between EU and US by inspecting which sectors, countries and firms are more accountable for the aggregate R&D intensity performance of these two economies, and it finds a high heterogeneity of firms' R&D intensity within sectors. Furthermore, it shows that there is a bigger population of both larger and smaller US top R&D firms which invest more strongly in R&D than competitors, and that the global R&D investment is concentrated in a few firms, countries and industries. Finally, the research founds a slightly higher EU R&D shift over sectors compared to the US, but not strongly enough towards high-tech sectors. Also, the EU has an even broader technological specialisation than its already broad industrial R&D sector specialisation, while the USA leads by number of technological fields belonging mostly to the industrial R&D sectors of its specialisation. Furthermore, the EU has been better able than the USA and Japan to maintain its world share of R&D investment even during the years of economic and financial crisis. Lastly, the study also indicates that firms make a complementary use of capital expenditures and R&D intensity for their R&D investment growth strategies and it reveals that there are differences in their use between firms' age classes across sectors. Overall, the main results of the Thesis suggest that to reach a more positive R&D dynamics and boost its competitiveness, the EU should adapt its industrial structure and increase the weight of high R&D intensive sectors. A focus on creating the conditions for firm creation and growth in new-emerging innovative sectors is advised together with favouring the exploitation of the full capacity of EU leading - but mature - sectors to also absorb high-technology from other sectors. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished