Low and medium technology industries in the knowledge economy: the analytical issues

The aim of this chapter is to explore some of the issues and to underline the main aspects that have been focussed upon in the PILOT project. We begin the chapter with consideration of why so much academic and policy attention has been paid, in our view disproportionately, to high-tech industries. In the second section we turn to the 'knowledge society', a concept to some extent consequent upon the focus on science and high-tech industries as the sources of economic success. Here we raise the question as to whether non-science-intensive industries have relocated out of Western Europe. A cause and consequence of the definitional problems is the way technology is measured. We focus on this issue in the third section of the chapter. Next, in the fourth and fifth sections of the chapter, we examine knowledge itself, first showing that there are different types of knowledge, and then pointing out the complexity in the relationships between science, knowledge and innovation. The following section focuses on innovation in low-tech industries specifically. This leads into a consideration of the importance of regional factors in the success of low-tech industries. We end with a brief conclusion that raises issues considered elsewhere in the book.