5. S&T Policy in the Learning Economy
With the advent of knowledge as the foundation of economic value, S&T policy becomes more sensible the aspects of knowledge creation, absorption, and diffusion, as opposed to its former emphasis on funding of research. This extension of the S&T policy scope is obliging to reconsider the role of research institutions, international relations and organizations and the relations between the public and private sector. It obliges to reconsider the very notion of a "public good".
Who produces knowledge becomes an important question as it supposes that he/she will ask for a retribution for his/her knowledge. To suppose science produces public goods is to consider that the producer will abandon the ownership of his/her knowledge. As we reviewed here, this is not likely to happen. At the end of the Second World War, public institutions were developing more knowledge for "public" purposes-that is pertaining to the state and public authorities. It has maintained the illusion of a public science only devoted to producing public goods. Michel Callon has shown that no piece of knowledge is public by itself. Knowledge is always located to some specific place, developed in a specific research environment; it applies locally and it takes a huge amount of work and investment to make it public. It involves libraries, universities, public programs, and so on. One of the roles of S&T is to discriminate between what could be public and what could be a privately owned piece of knowledge.
S&T policy needs to take into account that the universality of knowledge is not given ex ante, but constructed socially. This means building a social and institutional environment that permits the production of scientific knowledge, accumulating this knowledge and disseminating the information thus produced. Access to information becomes a sensible variable in the knowledge economy, and it takes specific institutions to do this. Bruno Latour has used the word "immutable mobiles" to qualify these pieces of knowledge that we circulate in order to describe reality. Knowledge takes many forms such as maps, charts, claims in articles, carefully labeled pieces of wood, soil or plants, drawings and photos of animals, bacteria or other microscopic living species, but also any trace of analysis of some material be it inert or alive. The gathering, classification and use of these immutable mobiles is what science is about. It involves institutions where ones learns how to use them. The value of this information is in the means we deploy to learn how to use it; it relies on its access. Thus the knowledge economy needs to be a learning economy.
The learning economy is more and more in the hands of private companies. Some large companies dispose of crucial information that they embody into marketable products-innovations like databases, information on pharmaceuticals and cures for diseases, and more generally information on techniques that permit enhanced efficiency of the productive systems. Privately owned companies access to the very creation of knowledge; private owners are deliberately designing pieces of knowledge that a user needs to buy in order to use it. This is a new economic fact and partly the wording of the new "knowledge economy" serves to identify this new reality. An immediate problem is that, in some cases, the information may be more useful in the hands of people who cannot afford to buy this information, medicines or techniques. The notion of "global public goods" has been forged to designate these goods that should be widely distributed even if they belong to some specific private company. This is the case of AIDS medication which belongs to large pharmaceutical multinationals which have priced these goods much above what can be reached by a usual consumer in developing countries where the disease has mostly affected the people. It is a question of science policy to invent, and manage a system that will permit both the delivery to people needing the medication and the protection of property rights in ways that do not affect the competitivity of firms engaged in R&D.
In the knowledge economy, the status of learning is changing. Schooling which is even more necessary, becomes a market itself. Inequality based on unequal access to knowledge superimposes traditional political and social hierarchies. S&T policy has to take into account the support of schooling and maintain an equitable balance between private investment and public investment in education.
The objective of research, in this learning economy, is to help firms as learning organizations to produce innovations. The management of the innovation process, including human resources and the work organization become critical areas. Learning organizations are those organizations that can use efficiently their technical environment, seek actively at technological alternatives, and enhance their productive processes by incorporating new or improved process. They are firms that are capable of absorbing new technologies without losing competitiveness, without getting disorganized and without a need of total retooling each time a new process is introduced. They are firms that can promote continuous and on-going process modifications in order to maintain high standard production.
In the learning economy, the public sector needs to promote the networks that support knowledge accumulation and diffusion. It needs to enhance the absorption capabilities of the firms. It needs to secure the access to information sources. Thus the aims of S&T policy, in a knowledge economy, need to be coordinated with the promotion of the innovation system.
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