Hatem M'Henni

Monitoring Research and Innovation Policies in the Mediterranean Region

The article shows how new policy tools are designed in the Mediterranean countries for the monitoring of research and innovation. It relies on the results of a large European project, ESTIME, funded by the European Union that aimed at describing the state of research and technology policies and systems of partner countries in the Mediterranean. Other initiatives are also mentioned that aimed at gathering information on research and innovation systems in the Middle East and North African countries (MENA). The article presents the importance of the European Union as a reference for this monitoring activity. It also shows that the new tools, for example, innovation surveys, are a part of the policy process itself. Finally, it presents the main characteristics of public policies, their recent turn toward innovation and the effects that these policies have had on the institutions and actors promoting innovation which we propose to call the ‘innovation world’. Two examples are presented in more detail, Tunisia and Morocco, since both countries have been actively promoting innovation policies and have developed innovation surveys.

Intra-Firm Diffusion of Innovation: Evidence from Tunisian SMEs Regarding Information and Communication Technologies

The aim of this paper is twofold: first, we want to explore the intra-firm diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) within Tunisian firms and to characterize its general trends regarding adoption and usage. Second, we want to emphasize the rank and epidemic effects highlighted by the disequilibrium models of intra-firm diffusion of innovation following the traditional view of Mansfield (1963a) and Antonelli (1985). Based on a face-to-face questionnaire of a random sample of 175 firms, our article shows that: (i) Three technological waves of ICT adoption are well characterized in the Tunisian manufacturing sector. This dynamic of adoption is linked to the age of the technologies. Time is the main explanatory variable for intra-firm diffusion of these technologies. (ii) A positive correlation between the size of the firm, seniority and the depth of adoption is found. This econometric estimation shows that the rank effect is well characterized within the Tunisian firms. (iii) A positive correlation between technological absorptive capacity building and intensity of ICT usage is found. This correlation confirms the epidemic effect. Our results show that disequilibrium model explanations of intra-firm diffusion of innovation are valid within the Tunisian manufacturing sector and seem more appropriate than the equilibrium theory for developing countries.