News
Chris Freeman’s Legacy
The University of Oslo Centre for Technology, Innovation
and Culture recently issued a working paper on the late Christopher Freeman (1921-2010), who
also served as the founding Chair of the TUT Technology Governance program
Advisory Board until his death and who has been a very close friend of the
program, our department and its mission. The working paper, authored by Freeman’s mentee Jan
Fagerberg as well as Morten Fosaas, Martin Bell and Ben. R. Martin, discusses
his contributions to the field of innovation studies, introducing some
previously unknown facts about the founder and the first director Science
and Technology Policy Research at the University of Sussex (SPRU). “Christopher Freeman: Social Science Entrepreneur”
describes how SPRU became under Freeman’s directorship an internationally
leading institution within the emerging field of innovation studies, exceeding
Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and MIT by having the largest share of innovation
studies published between 1970 and 1989. At that time SPRU served as a global
hub for the study of science, technology and innovation policy, attracting more
than twenty visiting fellows every year, many of whom came from countries in
the process of development and who later on returned full of inspiration and
ideas for how to do things differently at home. Fagerberg et. al have done a great job examining the
influence of Freeman’s most important works. They note that based on the
citations of his clearly most important work, The Economics of Industrial Innovation from 1974, its
influence was probably largest right after 1st publication, when it
had a virtual monopoly in giving a synthetic overview of the knowledge in the
field of innovation studies. The authors also point out the fact that the
amount of citations of this book still continues to rise during the third
decade after the publication of the first edition. Another important aspect of Freeman’s legacy is Research Policy, a journal
Freeman created in 1971. It is described by scholars in innovation studies as
the most important publishing outlet for their work today. The authors also highlight Freeman’s role as an
extremely productive academic supervisor during his time at the SPRU, having
supervised more than twenty DPhil and MPhil theses, which Fagerberg et. al
consider a remarkable achievement of someone who was the director of a large
and busy research institute. According to the authors, Freeman was always very
supportive towards his collaborators by emphasizing their contributions instead
of his own. As result, this rather unusual academic conduct contributed to the
creation of a culture within the innovation studies field that was open,
inclusive and friendly, providing an attractive environment for younger
scholars to join. The working paper also includes a very thorough
bibliography of Chris Freeman’s work. His last book chapter (no. 135) was the outstanding “Schumpeter’s
Business Cycles and Techno-Economic Paradigms”, his contribution to the
Festschrift for TG professor Carlota Perez edited by her Tallinn colleagues Wolfgang
Drechsler, Erik Reinert and Rainer Kattel, Techno-Economic Paradigms: Essays
in Honor of Carlota Perez (London - New York – Delhi: Anthem, 2009), pp.
125-144.
