Tuomo Nikulainen

Climate change is a major global challenge and governments around the world are now promoting environmental technologies to address both climate change and realize new employment and growth opportunities in this rapidly expanding area. Investments have reached unprecedented levels and stimulus packages to tackle the recent economic crisis also contain noticeable commitments to green technologies.

General purpose technologies (GPT) have a significant impact on economic activity through radical technological change and wide technological diffusion. This paper aims to address the generality of technologies associated with the GPT concept. Information and communications technologies (ICT), biotechnology and nanotechnology are viewed as existing or potential general purpose technologies, but there is a lack

This paper aims to provide new insights into the analysis of National Innovation Systems (NIS). Whereas the common approach is to analyze specific parts or a defined set of actors and their interactions, this paper attempts to take a more systemic approach by analyzing results of 13 surveys directed to different sets of actors related

This paper aims to provide an overview of the recently introduced demand based innovation policy instrument in Finland – the Strategic Centers for Science, Technology and Innovation (in Finnish – SHOKs). SHOKs are formed to support the innovative activities of existing industries in Finland with emphasis on industrial renewal through innovation. The focus in this

In order to shed light on the consequences of the ongoing financial crisis, ETLA conducted two surveys at the end of October 2008. The firm survey targeted firms employing at least 10 persons in Finland (2,017 observations with a response rate of 33%) and the consumer survey targeted 15–74-year-old Finns (2,025 observations with a response

Nanotechnology has been touted as a general purpose technology (GPT) and engine of growth for the 21th century, following in the footsteps of ICT. Nanotechnology is still in an early phase of development, it is scientist driven and thus largely exogenous to the economy at present. In Finland the interest towards nanotechnology is also growing.