Technology as a system: industrial and technological systems

Summary form only given as follows. Technology can be analyzed at the firm, plant, or industry level. In this paper, the author concentrates on the industry level and discuss the benefits of examining technology as a system. In other words, studying technology as a system means to observe a set of components whose relationships define a global behavior with characteristics of its own, that cannot be inferred by the single unit features. The author starts with a brief literature review. Then, the emphasis is given to the possible methods that may be used for the identification of technology as a system by exploring the relationship between industries and technologies. This study first discusses a few methods and their applications. The study indicates the importance of studying technology as a system, incorporating the strong connection between industrial and technological networks (or clusters). It is highlighted that using the industrial and technological systems framework offers many advantages in terms of public policy. This framework avails policy makers to synchronize both technology and industry policies, since technological development is highly correlated with other technologies and industries. Such a systemic consideration leads to better understanding of the dynamics of economy and allows utilization of the synergetic and network benefits of technological spillovers by integrating policies in a coherent way. Because of all these multi-usages of having a framework investigating all details of technology as a system, it should be a high priority to build a sound method to identify the industrial and technological systems at the national regional, and local levels