Pavitt's Taxonomy categorizes mostly large industrial firms along trajectories of technological change according to sources of technology, requirements of the users, and appropriability regime (Pavitt 1984). The

taxonomy image:Hierarchical clustering diagram.png, 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme o ...

aims to classify innovation modes according to different sectoral groups and the flow of knowledge between such groups. It was first proposed by

Science Policy Research Unit The Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) is a research centre based at the University of Sussex in Falmer, near Brighton, United Kingdom. Its research focuses on science policy and innovation. SPRU offers MSc courses and PhD research degrees. ...

(SPRU) researcher Keith Pavitt at the

University of Sussex The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ...

and has since been applied in

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or service (economics), services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a n ...

research to describe and categorize industries and the firms therein ( Archibugi 2001). According to Castellacci (2008), "Pavitt's model of the linkages between science-based, specialized suppliers, scale-intensive and supplier-dominated industries provides a stylized and powerful description of the core set of industrial sectors that sustained the growth of advanced economies during the Fordist age."

Pavitt's Taxonomy

Pavitt's taxonomy consists of four categories of industrial firms: # Supplier-dominated: includes firms from mostly traditional manufacturing such as textiles and agriculture which rely on sources of innovation external to the firm. # Scale-intensive: characterized by mainly large firms producing basic materials and consumer durables, e.g. automotive sector. Sources of innovation may be both internal and external to the firm with a medium-level of appropriability. # Specialized suppliers: smaller, more specialized firms producing technology to be sold into other firms, e.g. specialized machinery production and high-tech instruments. There is a high level of appropriability due to the tacit nature of the knowledge. # Science-based: high-tech firms which rely on R&D from both in-house sources and university research, including industries such as

pharmaceuticals Medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal product, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy ( pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the ...

and

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

. Firms in this sector develop new products or processes and have a high degree of appropriability from

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s, secrecy, and tacit

know-how Procedural knowledge (also known as know-how, knowing-how, and sometimes referred to as practical knowledge, imperative knowledge, or performative knowledge) is the knowledge exercised in the performance of some task. Unlike descriptive knowledge ...

References

* * *

Pavitt's Taxonomy

See also

References

Further reading