Purpose Through an evaluation of the Information Technology adoption and diffusion models and the Free and/or Open Source policy of the South African Government, the underlying assumption is that the developmental divide between those with and those without access to technology is purely technical. This paper illustrates that if Free and/or Open Source Software (FOSS) is to be used as a buildin...

Analysts generally agree that considerable technological innovation will be necessary to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to “safe” levels while minimizing economic impacts. Market failures related to both environmental pollution and innovation reduce the likelihood that the private sector will provide that innovation without public intervention. Meanwhile, cap-and-trade programs (CTPs) fo...

The conference on “Policy Evaluation in Innovation and Technology” on which this volume is based was organised in the context of the OECD work on “best practices in innovation and technology policy”. Its aim was to bring together policy practitioners from OECD Member countries with researchers working on evaluation issues in order to present and compare different experiences in policy evaluatio...

We review the literature on national innovation systems. We first focus on the emergence of the concept of innovation systems, reviewing its historical origins and three main flavours (associated to three “founding fathers” of the concept). After this, we discuss how the notion of innovation systems filled a need for providing a broader basis for innovation policy. We conclude with some perspec...