ABSTRACT
Now that the primarily inward-looking industrialization model has failed, many DCs are launching a reorientation in the direction of market economy and active world-market integration. With this new orientation, the firms in these countries are facing incentive structures similar to those existing for firms in developed industrial countries. For them, too, the features of their environment mean that efficiency, quality, flexibility, and innovativeness are rewarded, or that any lack of them is penalized. In order to be able to respond adequately to these incentives, firms in these DCs will place demands on their environment that have, for the most part, already been met in the industrialized countries. The shaping of the environment will become a central political task the solution of which may differ from the logic pursued hi the industrialized countries in terms of specific orientation, though not fundamentally. Technology policy, i.e. the shaping of the technology-related setting, is a key element in the design of a new environment. It is here that the technologypolicy discussion underway in the industrial countries assumes direct relevance for developing countries.
