The aim of this thesis is to investigate how knowledge arising from basic research diffuses into the commercial sphere and impacts upon it. The particular research area in question is Artificial Intelligence (AI), which until recently was limited to academic research laboratories and was considered to offer few possibilities for commercial exploitation. An empirical study is described which investigated a group of thirty-eight UK-based firms who were all promoting AI products and services to a market largely concerned either with developing capabilities in AI programming techniques or, in seeing demonstrations of the application of these techniques to specific, commercially relevant tasks. At the time of the study none of the AI firms had demonstrated any significant commercial success. . The commercialization of AI by these firms is compared to accounts of the innovation process given by Schumpeter, Freeman and Teece. These three accounts are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they contribute to the organic developme,nt of a 'Schumpeterian' account of the relationship between the commercial application of basic research and economic change. However, the analysis of the commercialization of AI in the UK suggests a more complex picture than is currently provided by this 'Schumpeterian' perspective. The AI firms were found to have been involved in a process of technology transformation .' that is, they had transformed and .packagedgeneric AI knowledge in order to make it possible for customers to acquire such knowledge via the market place. This commodification process also involved combining AI knowledge with industry-specific or applicationspecific knowledge, which is not generally regarded as a product of basic research, but is crucial to making AI solutions relevant to industrial organizations. Although the AI firms were attempting to develop a variety of market niches in which to sell their products and services, they all adopted a common methodology for identifying customers and seeking to establish collaborative relationships with them. It is this analysis of the transfer of academic knowledge via the market place, and the consequent transformation of both, that this thesis can add as a theoretical entity to the debate around the development of new technology-based industries.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:387362 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | Cornwall-Jones, Kate |
| Publisher | University of Sussex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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