Global technological races

A prime consideration of technological competition is the observation that firms are engaged in a race toward a larger market share. A major focus is the strategic orientation of corporations in participating in such a race, revealing empirically observable phenomena such as ‘catch-up’ and ‘leapfrogging’, as supported by statistical measurements. A statistical profiling of technological evolution and innovation is analyzed as it relates to competitive racing and rivalry among leading firms. Among the performance criteria to be assessed are frequency of frontier pushing, technological domination period, innovations versus imitations in the race, innovation frequency when behind or ahead, nature of jumps, leapfrogging or frontier-sticking, inter-jump times and jump sizes, race closeness measures, and interfrontier distance. A tentative policy conclusion of the paper is that technological racing patterns on a micro scale reinforce globalization and limit control of national and industry policy.