Emerging biotechnologies: full report - Nuffield Council on Bioethics

E m e r g i n g b i o t e c h n o l o g i e s
Transformative potential
Technical change and disruptive technologies
3.22 The ways in which new technologies come to be adopted and, eventually, supplant previous
technologies has been an important area of theoretical interest to social scientists and, in
particular, economists. A number of models have been proposed to explain technology choice
behaviour by societies, entrepreneurs and consumers. 226 They offer different explanations of the
phenomena of unevenness in technology change (particularly within industry), which tends to
be characterised by relatively stable phases during which a dominant technology is in
widespread use (and enjoys incremental improvement) and often destabilising transitions to
new dominant technological forms. What are now conventionally described as ‘disruptive
technologies’, 227 are novel technologies that are not incrementally linked to existing
technologies but that are capable of bringing novel products to market that are cheaper, simpler
and more convenient to use than the conventional technologies, or that are capable of
developing new markets that did not exist previously. 228 We are therefore concerned with two
consequences of technological change (although this distinction is not always clear-cut): first,
the ability to perform functions that were already being performed by established technologies
but radically more efficiently; second, performing functions that were not possible at all before
the appearance of the new technology.
3.23 As shown by the fact that it took over a hundred years to introduce and develop steam engine –
perhaps the epitome of a transformative technology – the benefits of transformative
technologies may take some time to become established. Perhaps the clearest example of
revolutionary technological change (novel technologies becoming pervasive in a short time) is
semiconductor-based technologies. 229 However, it may be a mistake to frame our expectations
of the pace and linearity of biotechnology innovations by the experience of semiconductors, and
even less so our expectations of their measureable impact. 230 The gradient and continuity of
innovation is important because it has implications for policy and the profile of resource
allocation over time. 231
226 Among the most well-known is the ‘rational choice’ model of neoclassical economics, the ‘wave model’ associated with
Joseph Schumpeter, evolutionary and Marxian models. A helpful survey is provided by Elster J (1983) Explaining technical
change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Universitetsforlaget).
227 We consistently prefer the term ‘transformative’ to ‘disruptive’. This avoids any unhelpful negative connotation of the term
‘disruptive’, but, more importantly, suggests the thoroughgoing way in which novel technologies may reconfigure a domain of
dependent possibilities not limited to the economic register.
228 Christensen CM (1997) The innovator's dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press).
229 Semiconductor materials are the basis of transistors, diodes and all integrated circuits and – as such – modern computing.
230 The increasing computational power of semiconductor technologies is often described as conforming to the famous ‘Moore’s
law’, which predicts the exponential rise in the density of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit (doubling
every two years). Nevertheless, it is not the performance of the technology that is relevant but its conditions of innovation.
Paul David makes a related point about the complexity and timescale of economic impacts of technology, reflecting on the
quip, attributed to Robert Solow, that “We see computers everywhere but in the economic statistics.”
231 See: Hopkins MM, Martin PA, Nightingale P, Kraft A and Mahdi S (2007) The myth of the biotech revolution: an assessment
of technological, clinical and organisational change Research Policy 36: 566-89. The authors conclude: “It may well be better
to allocate a greater proportion of resources to other activities, which offer more immediate health gains (e.g., the better
adoption of existing ‘low tech’ technologies with a proven track record of safety and efficacy). Our analysis also undermines
the idea that the biotech sector will play a key role in economic growth or regional development through the rapid creation of
thousands of new, high-technology jobs.”
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