I. Presentation of the issue

 Breaking through the bottlenecks in the transformation of emerging technological achievements has been an important part of the reform of China's S&T system, and governments at all levels have introduced a series of policies and measures to this end, as well as the National People's Congress (NPC) introducing the Law on Promoting the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements (promulgated in 1996 and amended in 2015). However, the issue of S&T achievements has not been effectively addressed. We need to reflect on this: why have the nationwide efforts made over such a long period of time not yielded significant results? Was the past understanding of the mechanisms of evolution of emerging technological achievements into industry comprehensive? What are the bottlenecks that limit the evolution of emerging technologies to industry?

        II. Analysis of the evolution of emerging technologies into industries

Looking back over the past 30 years we have made a series of efforts to promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, the transformation of scientific and technological achievements as a linear development process is a "cognitive misunderstanding" has not been able to jump out, including some scholars today advocate the establishment of the transformation of scientific and technological achievements "kitchen". "in order to carry out borderless secondary development" (House, 2015), and to incentivize the inventors of scientific and technological achievements as the main body of transformation. In fact, the generation and industrial development of new technologies is not a linear process, but an integrated ecosystem. This integrated ecosystem has three basic implications.

        First, the vast majority of emerging technology inventions are not technology applications or industrialization subjects.A review of the history of science and technology clearly shows that the vast majority of the achievements that human society enjoys today were not commercially applied until decades after their invention. For example, the prototype of network technology, which is the main support of the new technological revolution, was invented at Bell Labs in the late 1960s, and was applied on a small scale in universities and research institutes in the 1970s and 1980s before being commercialized on a large scale in the 1990s. Almost all of the basic technologies of the PC were invented and built by the Xerox R&D Center, including the graphical user interface, icons and drop-down menus, but it was Wozniak and Jobs who systematically applied these technologies to create PC products. Thus, the transfer of emerging technologies to industry encompasses the transfer of technological knowledge and capabilities between different actors. In fact, because the creation of technological achievements and their commercialization are two distinct types of activities, they have different values and rules, require different subject capabilities, and in most cases need to be undertaken by different people. Harvard Business School Professor Theodore Levitt even found after research: let technology creation talents engaged in commercialization development is "the worst thing". Therefore, the transformation of scientific and technological achievements is not the selective behavior of specific subjects, but a complex social relay, the need to establish and rely on sustainable and stable social mechanisms.

        Second, the vast majority of technology development processes are characterized by a pluralistic competition among different ideas and programmes.In the late 1990s, Professor William F. Hamilton of the Wharton School of Business proposed an evolutionary model of emerging technology development based on the idea of evolution of technological species, with the horizontal coordinate being time, representing the different stages of development and evolution of new technologies, and the vertical coordinate being the level of effort to advance technology development, representing the level of technological maturity as it evolves over time (as shown in Figure 1).

Figure 1 Hamilton's evolutionary model of new technology

In Hamilton's view, the development of a technology from scientific research to market entry can be divided into four stages.

 First, the discovery phase of technology, mainly scientific research, is highly exploratory and discontinuous, with many different technological solutions competing with each other; at this time, people's efforts to advance the development of a particular technology are low, and the level of technological maturity is also low.

The second is the stage of technology development, which focuses on continuous research and learning to find viable technology solutions with development prospects through feasibility analysis, social selection and market prospect exploration of technology options; at this time, the level of effort to promote the development of a particular technology increases rapidly and new technologies move towards maturity at a faster pace.

Thirdly, the action phase of promoting technology into commodities, where viable technology solutions are compared in terms of value creation potential to produce a market-accepted form of product-led design; at this point, the level of effort to promote technology development decreases and shifts to advancing it towards commoditization, building the initial structure of the industry.

Fourthly, when products enter the competitive stage of the market, products that are not economically rational are eliminated according to the principle of survival of the fittest, and first-mover advantages are constructed by the leading manufacturers; at this time, people's efforts to promote the development of the original technology are reduced and attention is paid to the construction of competitive advantages in the market, while efforts to promote the development of new-generation technology are increased.

Of the four stages of development mentioned above, conversion from stage 1 to stage 2 is faced with the choice and competition of different technological options, mainly based on the feasibility and social acceptance of the technology itself and, of course, to a certain extent, on market prospects, which can be called "formal competition"; conversion from stage 2 to stage 3, and especially to stage 4. The main competition is based on customer and market preferences, acceptance and profit prospects, which can be called "application competition". Lothar Perez (2002), an honorary researcher at SPRU, also found that the evolution of emerging technologies to industry is a process in which technical solutions are continuously selected and eliminated, and the space for technical feasibility is gradually shrinking. The above-mentioned research results show that not only is it difficult for the development and application of emerging technologies to coincide with each other, but the process of development and creation is also an interactive competition and learning process in which multiple subjects are intertwined. Among them, failure and repetition are inevitable, and even failure becomes the inevitable sustenance for the gradual maturation of the technology.

        Third, the evolution of emerging technologies to industry is a systematic evolution that encompasses the conditions for their application.The commercial success of emerging technologies is more aptly related to the maturity of the conditions for their application than to the maturity of the technological achievements. Apple was able to invent the personal computer because in the 40 years since the invention of the computer, all the conditions surrounding the application of the personal computer have been in place, including chips, storage devices, display technology, and so on. Therefore, the transformation of emerging technologies is not just about the technology itself, but also about a series of environments and conditions for the application of the technology, which is what Christensen describes as the "value network". The "value network" is the specific environment in which emerging technologies compete and survive, including the physical support, raw material supply, consumer demand, and policy environment. The value network of new technologies includes not only the physical factors that determine their function, but also their cost structure. Thus, it is not only a plurality of entities but an integrated social ecology that truly promotes the transformation of the results of emerging technologies. It is in this sense that the first application of personal computer technology in the United States and the formation of personal computer products are inevitable, while the completion of Apple is fortuitous.

        III. Basic judgements

Based on the mechanism of the evolution of emerging technologies into industries, the transformation of the majority of emerging technological achievements inevitably involves the competition of multiple technological ideas and schemes, the transfer of technological knowledge and capabilities among different subjects, and the construction of conditions for technological application or value networks. Obviously, only the competition of multiple technical schemes can ensure the maturity of the technical results themselves; only the symmetry of technical information, willingness to transfer, knowledge and ability between different subjects can effectively realize the docking and transfer of technical results; only the technical application conditions or value network that evolves at the same time in the competition of multiple subjects can ensure the physical feasibility and economic rationality of the application of technical results. We believe that the bottlenecks that restrict the evolution of emerging technological achievements to industry also exist in the above three aspects or links.

       IV. In-depth analysis of the core elements that constrain the transformation of new and emerging technological achievements

       First, the maturity of the emerging technologies themselves.

Since the administrative agencies have been allocating resources in China's science and technology management system for a long time, the actual mechanism for selecting the direction and field of emerging technology development is authoritative, i.e., government departments hire a small number of experts to select the direction of technology, and then recruit and organize scientific and technical personnel to tackle problems through guidebooks and other forms. In fact, in the emerging technology fields with high uncertainty and significant exploratory features, the planning and selection of technology development direction by a few scientists will inevitably inhibit the conception and exploration of multi-dimensional technical solutions, resulting in a substantial one-way technology development. As a result of inhibiting the effective competition of multiple subjects and multiple forms of competition, some of the emerging technology results that evolve according to the guidelines are themselves immature. This immaturity is manifested in the following three situations. 

First, because technical solutions are planned and designed at the outset of R&D, the lack of adequate multi-subject exploration and the difficulty of absorbing the reasonable content of failed solutions makes the prototype technology or product, despite following a predetermined path to be developed in the laboratory, like seedlings growing in a hothouse, lack practical technical efficiency and reliability.

Secondly, the research and development of emerging technologies has achieved the expected research results according to a predetermined route, but due to the fact that technology departments or technology experts often only plan the technology itself, but lack the systematic conditions or value network for technology application (due to a clear division of labor in administration, the construction of many technology application conditions is not the responsibility of science and technology management departments), resulting in the lack of physical conditions for the systematic application and commercialization of emerging technologies. Foundation (e.g., charging facilities for new energy vehicles).

Third, some emerging technology research and development has achieved the expected results, but due to the lack of emerging technology products such as raw materials supply chain security, the lack of independent manufacturing equipment and manufacturing process, while encountering related multinational companies price competition, making emerging technology products do not have the economic feasibility of transformation, such as integrated circuit-related technology research and development of many similar situations.

In short, the immaturity of emerging technological achievements due to a variety of reasons, making them not physically feasible and economically rational to be transformed into products, is the most critical constraint to their evolution to industry.

         Second, there is an asymmetry of information, technical knowledge and capacity among different actors.

        First of all, since most of the transfer of new and emerging technological knowledge and results takes place between different subjects, especially between those who develop technological knowledge and those who receive it, the prevailing information asymmetry has become an important factor inhibiting technology transfer.As a matter of fact, the main function of the various technology markets and technology trading institutions, which are important initiatives to promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, should be to build a space for sharing the fruits of social knowledge, so as to reduce information asymmetry among different actors and create conditions for investors or enterprises to choose various technologies on their own; however, since the vast majority of technology transfer institutions operate in a market-oriented manner and are motivated by the need to achieve results. This results in it focusing more on the conversion of individual technologies.

        Secondly, the asymmetry of knowledge capabilities between those who develop (innovate) and those who use (value realise) technological knowledge also seriously inhibits the transformation of emerging technological achievements.This capability asymmetry manifests itself in two aspects: first, the ability to recognize and identify the technological advancement and feasibility, and second, the ability to recognize and identify the commercial value of the technology. Generally speaking, the main body of technological achievement development may have a stronger ability of the first and weaker ability of the second, while the main body of technological application may have a stronger ability of the second and weaker ability of the first. Universities, research institutes and other scientific and technological achievements with a high degree of maturity are usually constrained by these two capability gaps when they are transferred to enterprises, especially some private enterprises with a low level of technology. An effective way to address the first capability gap is to promote the exchange and cooperation of talents between the two sides, especially to promote the introduction of talents by subjects applying technical knowledge to make up for their own shortcomings; an effective means to address the second capability gap is the innovation of management systems, such as the use of progressive technology value assessment (i.e., the value of technological achievements is reassessed several times over time) and performance gambling agreements (with a specific timeframe for the technology to be applied). The problem can be solved by means such as reassessing the value of technology through performance gambling to create value. However, in the practice of technology transfer, many localities and institutions have put too much energy into fostering professional intermediaries and technology value assessment institutions, which are of individual significance rather than general promotion value, and it is naturally difficult to achieve significant results.

        Third, there is a lack of a systemic ecology or value network for the development and application of emerging technologies.

Because of the strong specific planning and design characteristics of emerging technology R&D, and the great uncertainty of technology evolution, our planning and design of technology application conditions or value networks often lag behind technology R&D itself, resulting in limited technology application. In practice, we have developed some new technologies or products without the supporting technical equipment and material supply, and such instances are common, which seriously restrict the development and evolution of emerging technology achievements, and even make some technical fields "get up early and catch up late".

In addition to this, there is also based on China's specific national conditions, some large state-owned enterprises are keen to introduce foreign mature technology to capture the market, the lack of application of local technical knowledge application, a serious suppression of the demand for local technical knowledge, is also an important reason to inhibit the transformation of China's scientific and technological achievements.

(Source: International Technology Transfer)