The renewal and transformation of high, medium and low tech: a comparative approach

In the past decade, innovation studies have mainly focused on the high tech (HT) sector due to its soaring return on investment, and the critical role it plays building new economies. As a result, the innovation literature focus has deviated from the traditional, low and medium tech (LMT) to HT sectors. This study, among a series of recently published work, stresses the importance of LMT sectors from an innovation perspective. Results suggest that a renewal and transformation is occurring to both sectors. LMT is shifting towards differentiation, while HT is increasing its cost awareness dimension. Furthermore, HT firms are using both the linear model of innovation as well as the open innovation model. Firms in LMT that are generally conceived to be supplier dependent are enhancing their internal knowledge production mechanism to support their differentiation strategy and are still the user of the general purpose technologies that HT produces.