International Journal of Technology Management & Sustainable Development - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2007

The most effective approach to agricultural technology promotion and innovation is still a source of considerable debate, and nowhere more so than in the context of agricultural engineering hardware. Contemporary perspectives on agricultural innovation stress the importance of institutional change and give emphasis to the need to develop innovation capacity in systems terms, rather address limitations of technology transfer mechanisms. This paper illustrates using the case of manual irrigation technology treadle pumps in Bangladesh and India. It identifies five elements of this capacity: (1) a sector coordination mechanism; (2) a developmental rather than technical organising principle for sector development; (3) habits and practices (institutions) of key organisations; (4) interaction as a learning and knowledge transmission mechanism; (5) market demand as key incentive for innovation and (6) policies and institutional innovations to ensure adequate stakeholder participation. The paper concludes by suggesting that identifying new sources of institutional innovation is the most pressing task for initiatives that seek to make more effective use of knowledge and technology in development.

Traditional medicinal knowledge and related innovations are deeply embedded within the context of knowledge use and exchange of health services in developing countries. Traditional medicine systems cater to the health needs of a majority of people in the developing world, and there is a clear link between such practice and feedback innovations based on traditional medicinal knowledge. Understanding these interlinkages calls for an interface between innovation systems and health systems, and this is perhaps why this issue has not received the kind of attention it deserves in either strands of literature. This paper uses field level data collected during a survey of the biopharmaceutical innovation system in Nigeria in 20032004 to highlight these interlinkages. By way of results obtained in the survey, it derives the scope for policy intervention in order to harness the role of traditional medicinal knowledge for both biopharmaceutical innovation and health care infrastructure in Nigeria.

To ensure that the benefits of economic development reach the African poor, action on income redistribution is necessary. In the mid-1990's, international aid funding was refocused from higher education into areas thought to be more directly compatible with the emergent poverty reduction priority. Recent rehabilitation of higher education is exemplified by the report of the Commission for Africa, which asked the international community to commit US 5 billion to revitalise Africa's institutions of higher education with a view to developing professional elites as the basis for global competitiveness and good government. Universities can make direct contributions to poverty reduction but not as a consequence of their traditional activities. Such contributions can be achieved through technology management projects whose benefits are directly relevant to the income of poor communities. An example of such a project is described involving the development of export trading for garment manufacturing micro-enterprises. Resolving issues relating to design, standardisation and quality control and scaling up has enabled the development of export markets, which directly connect the spending power of affluent European populations with poor communities in Ghana.

This article explores and explains the effects of a manager's leadership style on sustainable, that is environment friendly, innovation processes. It uses an analytical framework, based on the literature, to investigate a manager's influence on sustainable innovation in the Dutch building sector. An empirical research project observes a manager in a series of sustainable innovation processes in four building projects. The research shows that a manager's charismatic, instrumental, strategic, or interactive leadership style substantially contributes to the development of sustainable innovation processes. It also shows that the exchange of knowledge and information in the organisation affects the sustainable innovation process. It concludes that a manager's performance of an innovation leadership style is (un)successful where it is (not) combined with the management of knowledge.

The control of engineering design processes is a complex problem that takes place within conflicting contexts combining technical, economic and social aspects. This paper presents the results of a study on the development of new methods and tools for the control of manufactured product design. In discussing these approaches, the paper shows their limitations with respect to the control of design coordination and collaboration, especially when the sociotechnical aspects of the design process are studied. A design control model and collaboration taxonomy that would enhance decisions concerning the coordination of design projects is presented. The tools discussed are the result of empirical studies based on the experiences of different industrial companies. The paper concludes by highlighting how these tools can be used for routine-based as well as innovative project operations.

The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication, Heather Horst and Daniel Miller (2006) Berg, 224 pp., ISBN 1845204018 (pbk), 16.99

The Oxford Handbook of Innovation Jan Faberberg, David C. Mowery and Richard R. Nelson (2006) Oxford: Oxford University Press, xviii + 656 pp., ISBN 0-19-928680-9 (pbk), 30.00