Christopher Freeman

For other people named Chris Freeman, see Chris Freeman (disambiguation).

Christopher Freeman
File:Freeman by Santhosh.png
Born	(1921-09-11)11 September 1921 Sheffield, England
Died	16 August 2010(2010-08-16) (aged 88) Lewes, England
Nationality	British
Spouses	Peggotty Selson ​ (died 1971)​ Margaret Young ​ (divorced)​ Carlota Perez ​ (after 2007)​
Academic career
Field	Science Policy and Innovation
Institution	Science Policy Research Unit
School or tradition	Schumpeterian
Influences	Karl Marx Joseph Schumpeter John Desmond Bernal
Awards	Bernal Prize (1987), Schumpeter Prize (1988), Prix International du Futuroscope (1993), World Technology Network Award for Policy (2001), Silver Kondratieff Medal (2007)

Christopher Freeman (11 September 1921 – 16 August 2010) was a British economist, the founder and first director of Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, and one of the most eminent researchers in innovation studies, modern Kondratiev wave and business cycle theorists. Freeman contributed substantially to the revival of the neo-Schumpeterian tradition focusing on the crucial role of innovation for economic development and of scientific and technological activities for well-being.

Freeman was the founder and the first Director, from 1966 to 1982 of SPRU, the Science Policy Research Unit of the University of Sussex, England, and RM Phillips Professor of Science Policy and later Professor Emeritus of at the University of Sussex. His fields of specialization were the economics of innovation and technical change, science and technology indicators, the diffusion of technologies, structural change in the world economy, and the "catch-up" efforts of developing countries. In 1986, on his formal retirement, he became visiting professor at the Aalborg University in Denmark and professorial fellow at the now Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

Besides his intellectual contributions in the economics of innovation and systems of innovation, Christopher Freeman was 'an academic entrepreneur'. Among the innovations for which he was responsible was 'The Frascati Manual', an OECD venture meant to collect and standardize the statistics on R&D, and the subsequent stream of work science and technology indicators at OECD and around the world. Secondly, he set up, shaped and for many years directed the Science Policy Research Unit, SPRU, which during the 1970s and 1980s was the pioneering institution in the field. Thirdly, with colleagues at SPRU, in the United States, in France and in Germany, he founded and edited for over 30 years the journal Research Policy, establishing it as the leading journal in the field. His major book, The Economics of Industrial Innovation, was copied by Ugo Pereira.

He introduced the concept of National System of Innovation with B.-Å. Lundvall and Richard Nelson.

He mentored several generations of economists and social scientists working on technical change, innovation and the knowledge society. Among them, Keith Pavitt, Luc Soete, Carlota Perez, Mary Kaldor, B.-Å. Lundvall, Igor Yegorov, Giorgio Sirilli, Daniele Archibugi, Giovanni Dosi and Jan Fagerberg. His intellectual legacy has extended to almost every continent through SPRU graduates, some of whom have applied his thinking to the role of innovation in development in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Programs that have their origins in his work can be traced at leading public policy institutions such as the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.

Influences

Joseph Schumpeter

Luc Soete wrote the following about the influence of Schumpeter on Freeman:

“The emergence of Freeman’s previous concept of ‘new technological systems’ might well be considered as similar to the concept of change in technological paradigm, already used extensively in his Schumpeterian writings. Freeman broadened his still relatively narrow, technology-orientated concept of ‘new technology systems’ to the far broader concept suggested by Perez in one of the most influential articles in the area of long waves, of change in technological regime or change in techno-economic or socio-economic paradigm. The view that the structural crisis brought about by the depression is, in Perez’s words, “the visible syndrome of a breakdown in the complementarity between the dynamics of the economic subsystem and the related dynamics of the socio-institutional framework’ and amounts not only to a process of “creative destruction” or “abnormal liquidation” in the economic sphere, but also in the socio-institutional appeals particularly to Freeman. Indeed, Freeman, despite his strong Schumpeterian allegiances, fully acknowledges the point made by Perez that Schumpeter did only have a narrow economic (if any) interpretation of the occurrence of depressions. As he puts it: “Despite [Schumpeter’s] acceptance of the importance of organizational and managerial innovations and the breadth of his approach to the development of social sciences , his theory of depression is narrowly economic” and further reiterating the point made by Perez, he adds: “But it is the ‘mismatch’ between the institutional framework with its high degree of inertia, and the outstanding revealed cost and productivity advantages of the new technological paradigm which provides to search for social and political solutions of the crisis.”

John Desmond Bernal

Luc Soete wrote that the paragraphs below (Fagerberg et al., 2011) describe best the influence of Marx and Bernal on Freeman.

“As a young man Freeman had been exposed to Marx’s evolutionary perspective on capitalist development, and this came to have a lasting impression on his understanding of social, economic and institutional change. Marx had analysed capitalism as a dynamic system characterized by continuous interaction between capital accumulation, technological progress and social and institutional conditions, and Freeman was strongly influenced by this perspective, as many others had been before him. Yet although Marx characterized capitalism as a historically progressive system, he also held that its social and institutional conditions needed to be radically changed (or revolutionized) if society was to reap the full benefits of potential technological progress, a view that many in the crisis-ridden Western societies of the 1930s came to sympathize with. However, like many of his generation, Freeman eventually became disillusioned with the attempts to engineer such radical changes in the Soviet Union and elsewhere[1], and decided to focus on how one might get the most out of technological progress here and now through appropriately shaped policy and management. Around the time of the 2nd World War Freeman studied at the London School of Economics (only interrupted by war service). He was, however, dissatisfied with the kind of economics that was taught there, which he saw as overly static in character (in contrast to Marx’ dynamic approach) and totally deficient when it came to analysing technological progress and its relationship with science, an aspect that Freeman considered to be of increasing importance economically and politically. On the latter, he was influenced by the natural scientist and writer, J. D. Bernal, a devoted Marxist, who at the time gave extracurricular courses which Freeman attended. Bernal was a strong believer in the potential of scientific research, not only in universities but also in industry, to promote the welfare of mankind (Bernal, 1939). He argued that radically increasing the amount of research might benefit society enormously provided this was matched by appropriate policies and management. To support his argument, Bernal also provided an empirical estimate of the (rather modest) amount of resources devoted to this in the UK at the time. Freeman found this line of inquiry particularly inspiring. In a later paper, he pointed out:

 ″Bernal went beyond Schumpeter and Marx in his perception of the extent to which the R&D function had become professionalised and internalised within both industry and government. (. . .) Bernal’s principal contribution to economics and the other social sciences was his clear perception that the allocation of resources to the various branches of organised R&D and related scientific services and their efficient management had become crucial for the development and performance of nations and enterprises.″

Despite his admiration for Bernal, Freeman realized that any analysis of the contribution from science and technology to economic progress would be deficient without a thorough understanding of what drives technological activities in firms, something that he felt was missing both in Bernal’s work and in the kind of economics he was taught while attending university. There was, however, another perspective that he found more helpful in this regard. In Capital, Marx had put forward the theory that the driving force behind capitalist development was technological competition between firms and, as is well known, Schumpeter later made this the cornerstone of his theory. [...] Freeman’s vision became ultimately based on Marx’s and Schumpeter’s dynamic evolutionary outlook, with capitalist firms at the centre. However, he strongly felt that their analyses, largely for reasons to do with changes in the economy (and society) since their times, had failed to properly take into account the role of R&D at the level of the firm and in society more generally, as well as their interactions (Freeman, 1968b, 1974, 1992).”

Career

Sussex and SPRU

The Jubilee Building, where SPRU is currently based

Major projects

SPRU

The Freeman Building, where SPRU was located until 2013

Institution building

SPRU

The beginnings

In the 1960s Freeman was approached by the then Vice-Chancellor of the newly formed University of Sussex asking him to set up a research unit for Science Policy. The original cell that initiated SPRU was set by Geoff Oldham as Deputy Director, Jackie Fuller as Administrator and Chris Freeman as Director.

The Mantell Building

By the early 1980s, SPRU had long moved to three floors in the Mantell Building, had many researchers and had gained a worldwide reputation as the pioneer in innovation research.

The Freeman Centre

In 2002 ground was broken for the Freeman Centre – a new state of the art research building to house two of Britain’s leading centres of excellence in science and technology policy and innovation management. The two centres, SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research) at the University of Sussex and CENTRIM (Centre for Research in Innovation Management) at the University of Brighton already had a long history of collaboration. Howard Rush, Ben Martin, Mike Hobday and David Gann seized an opportunity to respond to a special ESRC Call for Proposals for joint infrastructure funding, successfully arguing the case for bringing together theory, policy, and practice, under the same roof.

Once funding was secured, they worked closely with the architects and contractors to design a building aimed at creating an environment that would enhance the possibilities to work collaboratively, interactively, and creatively in what was to become the largest cluster of innovation researchers in the world. The leaders of the two universities agreed that the new centre would be located on the University of Sussex campus, in an area known as ‘the wild meadow’. But what to name the building? There was unanimous agreement that it should bear Chris’s name, but getting the ever-modest Chris to agree to having a building named after him was always going to be tough work. That he had inspired and supported the work of probably every researcher in the two groups and that he was one of the leading figures in the field was clearly not going to cut it with Chris. So Howard Rush and Mike Hobday took him to one of his favourite pubs in Lewes, where over a couple of pints, they argued how beneficial it would be for the funding proposal: only 2% of bids to the call were likely to be successful and therefore it would be an enormous help to have Chris directly associated with it. Chris counter-argued that buildings should only be named after dead people. They told him that this could be arranged – at which point he reluctantly agreed. For the decade between 2003 and 2013, SPRU and CENTRIM thrived in the Freeman Centre, which also attracted hundreds of collaborators and users of their research from academia, industry, and government. However, in 2013, Michael Farthing, the then Vice-Chancellor of Sussex, decided to address a financial crisis at his university by creating a School of Business, Management and Economics, and incorporating SPRU into that new school. To everyone’s dismay, his decision involved not only removing SPRU from the Freeman Centre to another location on the other side of campus, but also the Freeman name from the building. This decision was met by a strong international campaign involving over 650 current and past colleagues, students, and associates of SPRU. Within two weeks the University partially reversed its decision and Chris’s name remains in place on the building, but sadly it no longer contains SPRU and CENTRIM researchers.

Awards and honors

Freeman held several honorary doctorates including those from the Universities of Linköping, Sussex, Middlesex, Birmingham, Brighton, . He received the 1987 Bernal Prize, the 1988 Schumpeter Prize, and the 1993 Prix International du Futuroscope. In 2007 he was awarded with the Silver Kondratieff Medal by the International N. D. Kondratieff Foundation and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (RAEN). The Freeman Centre building in Brighton, former home to CENTRIM and SPRU, is named after him.

Selected Publications

• Developing science, technology and innovation indicators: What we can learn from the past, Research Policy, 2009, vol. 38, issue 4, pages 583-589 (with Luc L. Soete), doi:10.1016/j.respol.2009.01.018
• Systems of Innovation: Selected Essays in Evolutionary Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 2008.
• As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution (co-author with Francisco Louçã), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002.
• The Economics of Industrial Innovation, 3rd edn. (co-author with Luc Soete), Pinter, London, 1997.
• Work for All or Mass Unemployment?: Computerised Technical Change in the Twenty-First Century, (co-author with Luc Soete), Pinter Pub Ltd, 1994.
• The Economics of Hope: Essays on Technical Change, Economic Growth, and the Environment, Pinter Pub Ltd, 1992.
• Technology Policy and Economic Performance: Lessons from Japan, Pinter Pub Ltd, 1987.
• Unemployment and Technical Innovation: A Study of Long Waves and Economic Development, (co-author with John Clark and Luc Soete), Greenwood Press, 1982.

Works on Freeman

• Mammo Muchie; Christopher Freeman: the founder and doyen of the economics of innovation theory Innovation and Development, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2011, pages 135-150.
• Jan Fagerberg, Morten Fosaas, Martin Bell and Ben R. Martin; Christopher Freeman: social science entrepreneur Research Policy, Volume 40, Issue 7, September 2011, Pages 897-916.

External links

• The Vega Science Trust - Bernal and the Social Function of Science - Science Video – 1996 masterclass by Freeman
• The legacy of Chris Freeman : About the Department : SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit : University of Sussex in the Wayback Machine
• Remembering Chris Freeman
• Complete list of publications