Benjamin Coriat

Organizations, firms and institutions in the generation of innovation

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to develop the innovation system analysis by bringing together the “institutional” and “organizational” dimensions of the process of innovation at the firm level. The objective is to start elaborating a “systemic” theory of innovation in firms. The paper summons up the contributions and limits of “organizational” and “institutional” approaches to innovation. This preliminary investigation leads to a series of relevant questions. In a second section, an attempt is made to overcome the dichotomy and make progress towards a more exhaustive and better-articulated representation of the innovation process considered at the firm level.

The New Role and Status of Intellectual Property Rights in Contemporary Capitalism

While the importance of finance in contemporary capitalism is broadly acknowledged, this paper explores its relationship with the knowledge economy through the shifting regimes of intellectual property rights (IPR). Distinguishing between the public science model of Fordism, which saw IPR as a public good, and the IPR of the knowledge economy, which grants exclusive licenses to private firms, the paper demonstrates how new institutions have evolved which support financial accumulation through the commodification of IPR. The paper examines how legislation has been passed to protect the IPR of the North and then forced upon developing states. The commodification of IPR has been an important source of complementarity for financial markets, providing opportunities for speculation on the value of invisible assets in new markets. Unlike previous periods when technology transfer was made possible through weaker IPR regimes in less developed states, and so enabled catch up, in contemporary capitalism IPR regimes are specifically designed to maintain unequal growth. The paper illustrates the consequence of this inequality in relation to the inaccessibility of drugs to treat HIV and the maintenance of an unequal international system.

TRIPS post-2005 and access to new antiretroviral treatments in southern countries: issues and challenges.

Until 2005 some developing countries with pharmaceutical manufacturing capacities especially India used the transitional period allowing local manufacturers to produce and sell generic versions of first-generation ART drugs patented in industrialized countries and originally produced and sold at high prices by Western pharmaceutical companies. Thanks to international competition between generic manufacturers and these companies significant price reductions were achieved for the large majority of these drugs. This was a key factor in the implementation and strengthening of access to AIDS treatment in developing countries and a strategic element in the World Health Organization (WHO) 3by5 plan. However with the end of the extended deadline for TRIPS compliance the scenario is likely to change radically. Considering the end of the transitional period which effectively will prohibit the free manufacture of newer and innovative antiretroviral generations to mark a key episode in the history of the fight against AIDS in developing countries this review will provide an overview of the meaning and consequences of this turning point and to present some of the new challenges of the post-2005 period. (excerpt)

Organizational Innovation in European Firms: A Critical Overview of the Survey Evidence

The purpose of this paper is to provide an initial synthetical analysis of the lessons to be drawn from the study of the diffusion of organizational innovations in European firms. This study is based on the exploitation of four major nationwide surveys that were respectively carried out in Germany, Great Britain, Denmark and France. Thus, the present working paper intends to complete and extend a series of studies aiming at making a thorough examination of the links existing between organizational innovation and firms’ competitiveness, as part of a reflection already initiated in « Made in Europe ».

Call for action to secure universal access to ART in developing countries

1 Usher AD. GAVI enters its second decade with massive funding gap. Lancet 2010; 375: 791. 2 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill and Melinda Gates pledge

Commons and the Public Domain

10 billion in call for decade of vaccines. http://www. gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/ decade-of-vaccines-wec-announcement -100129.aspx (accessed April 7, 2010). 3 Davos 2010 Press Conference. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledges new commitment to vaccines. Jan 29, 2010. http://www.livestream.com/ worldeconomicforum03/video?clipId=pl a_0a5ad43d-be31-42e8-b92479b5fd46885e (accessed April 22, 2010).

Les nouvelles théories de l'entreprise

This article critically examines the concepts of the commons and the public domain as developed in the literature on law and economics, and in the legal literature on intellectual property. It aims to accomplish two things: reviewing the literature laying out diverse meanings associated with these terms and reintroducing them into radical political economy. The study of the commons and the public domain have long been neglected in the area of radical political economy, and the way these concepts have been developed in the literature reviewed is only marginally relevant to problems and methods of political economy. This article argues for a reassessment and redefinition of the commons and the public domain from the standpoint of radical political economy, and proposes a research agenda for the commons.