ANNEXE I : Différentes définitions du concept d’opportunité technologique.

Plusieurs définitions peuvent être proposées du concept d’opportunité technologique comme :

‘’The set of production possibilities for translating research resources into new techniques of production that employ conventional inputs. Some theoretical treatments have thus represented technological opportunity as one or more parameters in a production function relating research resources to increments in the stock of knowledge, with the stock of knowledge entering in turn as an argument, along with conventional inputs, in the production function for output (Cf. Griliches, 79, Schankerman, 84). Related approaches treat technological opportunity as the elasticity of unit cost with respect to R&D spending (Dasgupta, Stiglitz, 1980a, Spence, 84), as a shift parameter determining the location of an innovation possibility frontier representing the tradeoffs in the direction of technological change (Levin, 78), and as a shift parameter determining the location of a frontier describing the trade-off between the time and cost of an R&D project (Scherer, 84b).’ (Cohen [1995], pp.214-215). ’

Klevorick, Levin, Nelson et Winter [1995], p.188, en proposent aussi un ensemble de définitions :

‘ ‘’Technological opportunities, which comprise the set of possibilities for technological advance, may be measured in terms of the distribution of values of improved production-function or product-attributes parameters that may be attained through R’ ‘&’ ‘D, or, alternatively, as the distribution of returns to R’ ‘&’ ‘D, given demand conditions, the current level of technology, and the appropriability regime. In search model of R’ ‘&’ ‘D activity, which analogizes R’ ‘&’ ‘D to drawing balls from an urn, technological opportunities describes the distribution of values of the balls in the urn. [...] In the other standard model of R’ ‘&’ ‘D that analogizes R’ ‘&’ ‘D to physical investment and the stock of knowledge to the stock of physical capital, technological opportunity corresponds to the function that maps the flow of R’ ‘&’ ‘D into increases in the stock of knowledge.’’ ’