This famous technological frontier new go west

The famous slogan "when Renault sneezes, the France a cold" now belongs to our industrial history. Working fortress erected on the île Seguin is SIBAs for artists who will be in residence. It took barely forty years to live a transformation of our economies of a magnitude never known before. The speed of change and its amplitude forced to reconsider the question of the sources of growth. The man that economic newspapers suggest as being the richest of the world, Bill Gates, has not built its wealth by pressing oil sponge of Texas, but pressing the skull juice, the ideas that computer engineers have in their heads. His wealth was built in record time compared to that of the Carnegie and the Krupp!

Understand what has, in Europe, to draw the consequences both in terms of public policy such as education and research and on how to manage human resources is a program of research in itself for economists, but for sociologists and researchers in management.

As Adam Smith, which produced the wealth of nations is changing. To make short, one could say that we are entering a new phase of production. The production of knowledge. Must be understood that knowledge is not one product like any other. When an industrial produced a yogurt, this yogurt is produced to disappear; There is no such knowledge; the knowledge that I make, I can pass it (by writing this article), but I have not lost it so far, I can even improve it by other readings and discussions between colleagues and reactive readers! Of course, knowledge can become obsolete and can be characterized as unnecessary (that we think about the computer scientist today that today might pitching antidepressants jurisdiction to write in fortran to draw a circle), and this distinction between know useful and whether unnecessary is a debate which should not be exhausted for the evidence of its terms.

Positive externalities

This debate refers to the question of the terms and conditions for the production of knowledge, and the role of the public power, in its ability to install infrastructure for training, becomes crucial. Lifelong learning is not an empty slogan and makes sense in a learning economy. It is all the symbolic weight must be given to the Lisbon Declaration, even if the way to go between the intentions and the action will be long. The terms and conditions for the production of knowledge become strategic if they are able to foster positive externalities. Knowledge feeds to: example of feedback positive for talk like systems theorists. Endogenous growth theorists say the same thing with different words. Classical theorists explained us that sustainable growth was impossible because of the diminishing returns of the Earth (Ricardo, Stuart Mill) and capital (Marx). Economists claiming endogenous growth speak of positive externalities of knowledge, meaning thereby that technical progress is not a deus ex machina would overhang the economies. Endogenous growth economists have, in fact, tried to "sociologiser" technical progress. Technical progress is explained such as the initiatives of the men, who do not stop to develop, seek, find and confront new ideas into action.

The problem is of course to find the limits of this "Schumpeterian" growth which feeds transformed ideas constantly into new products. These ideas migrated in markets; the fact that knowledge may cross borders is nothing new, but what characterizes capitalism today is the extent of this migration on the basis of the permanent construction of a vast reservoir of knowledge at European and global level. This migratory knowledge is marketed and becomes in fact a strategic resource for firms, who try to tap into this reservoir as soon as possible and as quickly as possible. But these interactions between the men do not need to be paid by the market, hence the importance of supported States of public spaces such as education, including higher education, there where revolve technology and science. This famous technological frontier, new "go west".

Two consequences to conclude: the one on the management of public policies (education and research support), and the other on the management of enterprises, and especially on how effective the human resource and human capital.

Economists working on endogenous growth insist on the fact that knowledge is somehow a public good which does not say his name. When I type this text with the XXX software, I is not thousands of people to use the same software, without this use results in an additional cost for each of the persons deprived. Which is expensive, is the price of the first copy, and it is this investment is that the producers whether want to protect. Whether leader Paul of l'un, des l'un des Romer, one, predicted that the economy Brief flashbacks: English landowners had surrounded their surroundings of barbed wire, forcing poor farmers to share the communal meadow to graze their animals. This private initiative led to the scarcity of resources and thus provoked the expulsion of poor farmers. Evitera on this tragedy What are the conditions of migration of knowledge Are patents the equivalent of the barbed wire preventing migration This knowledge may migrate only if he is captured by engineers that can take ownership of designs or industrial processes content or disassemble a machine that, somehow, can be considered as of "frozen" knowledge More thawing is rapid and more products are quickly copied and improved. Patents are also an effective tool of knowledge migration. The role that should or should not play the intellectual property to limit and control the sharing of knowledge in a market became a European issue that falls within the Commission and the European Parliament, and international organizations like the World Trade Organization.

Second result, in terms of the management of enterprises, that of translation accounting, the companies are to understand as containers whether. Tools to assess this proposal economically after Over the years, efforts have been made to establish a human without great result resources accounting, to the extent that the concept of intangible asset is only recognised for patents, but not for the human resource, which is evaluated in the operating account, but not in the balance sheet, except when a final assessment. Economist Paul David stressed however that in the United States the immaterial or intangible capital stock represented by investments in training, research and development exceeds the tangible capital stock, and it as early as 1973. New cards must be found to otherwise represent the territory of enterprises