ABSTRACT
Technological change is not a random phenomenon. In any field of practice, we can identify several persistent patterns with a specific direction of technological change, which last for a certain period of time. The examples are the mechanization of manual operations, the increasing speed of computation, or the improvement of resolution in LCDs. Different theorists dealing with technological change refer to these paths with different terminology, for example, “natural trajectories” by Nelson and Winter (1977), “technological trajectories” by Dosi (1982), and “innovation avenues” by Sahal (1985). In addition, Rosenberg (1976) tries to explain the same phenomenon with the term “inducement mechanism,” while David (1985) and Hughes (1983) use the terms “path dependence” and “reverse salient,” respectively. In this chapter, I refer to such persistent patterns of technological change as technological paths, which encompass both large-scale patterns such as mechanization and more localized ones such as the improvement of resolution in LCDs.
