The second framework is the dominance framework. Economic dominance theory (EDT) is used to explore asymmetric relations between various entities interacting in a network. EDT originates in the works conducted by Perroux (1948) on the power between regions and nations in international exchanges. EDT employs a tool, namely influence graph theory (IGT; Lantner 1974), which identifies the dependences and interdependences between entities.
According to Lantner, IGT facilitates the assessment, within any structure that can be represented by a linear system, of the “global” influence that an entity A exerts on an entity B. But the study of this global influence requires consideration of what happens in the rest of the structure. The connections between A and C, D, etc., impact and amplify the direct influence on B (Lantner and Lebert 2015). In this study, IGT is applied to technological knowledge flows in order to better understand their dissemination between civilian and defense sectors.
Adopting a systemic approach, this work reconciles a global analysis framework centered on the concept of duality (Guichard and Heisbourg 2004; Mérindol 2004; Bellais and Guichard 2006; Serfati 2008) with an approach of technologies (Pinch and Bijker 1984; Carlsson and Stankiewicz 1991; Carlsson et al. 2002; Bijker 2010) facilitating the evaluation of their dual potential. The empirical work relies on the systematic analysis of knowledge production (Jaffe 1986; Jaffe and Trajtenberg 2002; Verspagen 2004; Hall et al. 2005) within large defense companies. It employs tools originating in the theory of technological coherence (Teece et al. 1994; Cohen 1997; Piscitello 2005; Krafft et al. 2011; Nasiriyar et al. 2013) and also those resulting from EDT (Perroux 1948, 1973, 1994; Defourny and Thorbecke 1984; Lantner 1972, 1974; Lantner and Lebert 2015; Lebert 2016; Lebert and Meunier 2017).
This leads to a reflection on the role that knowledge and its dissemination plays in dual potential measurement and the characterization of the modes of interaction between the civilian sector and the defense sector in an innovation process.
Endeavoring to understand the mechanisms for dual technological innovation dissemination, this works addresses three main challenges. The first challenge is to define dual technological innovation and propose an analysis framework for its study. To address this challenge, the first essential step is to understand that duality is a relatively fuzzy notion, taking on many characteristics depending on the interpretation (Cowanand Foray 1995; Kulve and Smit 2003; Guichard and Heisbourg 2004; Mérindol and Versailles 2015b). Defense manufacturers assimilate duality to a form of market diversification, while public powers perceive it as a means to relax a budget constraint (Gutman 2001) and at the same time take advantage of new innovation relays; these two examples show that duality is a multifaceted concept. In order to deal with its technological component, while keeping in mind this complexity, the proposed analysis framework relies on a precise meaning of the concept based on the principle of joint military–civilian technological production. In the context of this work, duality differs from technology transfers (Molas-Gallart 1997), and the proximities between civilian and military sectors in technological production play an essential role in dual innovation structuring (Guichard 2004b; Fiott 2014).
The second challenge relates to methodology. It involves designing a set of tools aimed at evaluating the dual potential of technologies. According to the above-mentioned analysis framework, this requires the determination of the joint military–civilian technological production potential. Traditionally, economics defines a technology based on the knowledge it comprises (Carlsson and Stankiewicz 1991). It is to this knowledge, either considered as individual units or as an articulated set, that a technology owes its characteristics. Therefore, the study of knowledge production in civilian and defense sectors makes it possible to measure their capacities to jointly produce technologies that, if not identical, are at least compatible. Moreover, a knowledge-based assessment of this matter has the advantage that it avoids a priori judgment on the potential use of technologies,thus enabling an approach that is both independent from and complementary to that of the expert. It is consequently possible to define a set of tools that measure the dual potential of any technology employing original theoretical frameworks in duality analysis, namely the theory of technological coherence (Teece et al. 1994; Piscitello 2005) and EDT.
The last challenge is to understand the influence of duality on knowledge production. This leads to a repositioning of dual technological innovation in its global environment. Indeed, besides measuring the dual potential of a technology, the challenge is in this case to better understand the roles played by the defense sector, on the one hand, and by the civilian sector, on the other hand, in structuring dual innovation-related knowledge. In fact, designing a technology does not rely only on the production of its internal knowledge, but also on the production of external knowledge. According to Fleming and Sorenson (2001), knowledge production is correlational. Therefore, studying how dual innovation-related knowledge is structured requires an analysis of the knowledge specific to the respective innovation. Furthermore, knowledge that may be useful either upstream of technological development or downstream of knowledge dissemination should be considered. Hence, the definition of the technological environment in which a dual innovation emerges facilitates the understanding of complementarities between civilian and defense sectors, and the description of dual potential depending on the interactions between the studied technology and its technological environment.
Consequently, the added value of this study is threefold: first, a duality analysis framework rooted in the principles of industrial economics and innovation economics, because of which duality is no longer considered a defense particularism; second, a set of tools that make possible, in addition to the traditional case studies, the measurement of the dual potential of various knowledge systems and their comparison; finally, an analysis of the dual potential of knowledge systems that are representative of the innovation activity of the world’s largest innovative companies in the field of defense between 2010 and 2012.
Introduction to Part 1
Technological production is partly driven by the intended uses of the developed technology. This does not exclude the possibility that certain technologies simultaneously have multiple uses. Putting together defense innovation and civilian innovation for the joint production of technologies that are useful to both civilian and defense domains is a challenge that can be addressed by gaining a certain understanding of technology production and dissemination mechanisms.
This first part of the book aims to build the theoretical framework for studying various modes of interaction between the defense innovation sector and the civilian innovation sector. Starting in the 1980s, technological duality has been dealt with in many works (Gummett and Reppy 1988; Alic 1994; Cowan and Foray 1995; Molas-Gallart 1997; Kulve and Smit 2003; Mérindol and Versailles 2015b), but the manner in which it is defined often varies from one author to another. It is nevertheless easy to get a sense of dual innovation, whose common and prosaic definition is the search for synergies between defense and civilian sectors in the innovation process. However, distinguishing it from related and sometimes amalgamated notions, such as dual-use items, technology transfers, spin-offs and spillovers, is not always an easy task. Whatever the case, the most recent works seem to agree on the systemic nature of dual innovation (Guichard 2004a; Mérindol and Versailles 2010; Acosta et al. 2013) and in order to integrate all the dimensions of duality, this is the path followed in building the theoretical framework proposed here.
The analysis will however focus on the purely technological dimension and the perspective adopted for this purpose is that of the technological system, as defined by Carlsson and Stankiewicz (1991) as a flow of knowledge and competences.