Skills required for innovation

The mix of the two forms of human capital is likely to reflect, to a certain degree at least, the ‘division of labour’ between research in the private and public sector corresponding to the NSI and overall technological progress. [...] As for the implications for the skills involved in the innovation process, the complex interactive web of multivariate sources of innovation suggests that it could be futile to focus the attention on the human resources in the innovating firms alone. [...] The latter examined the literature that looked into the relationships between the level of education, the type of training received and capabilities of workers and managers to adapt to technological change. [...] The section of the paper discussing the relationship between technological change and education remains a relevant contribution to today’s discussion of the appropriate response of the education system to challenges presented by the technological change. [...] They show that the observed pattern of evolution of wage differentials and returns to skills over the 1976-2000 period in the US can be explained by the change in the ratio of skilled labour to physical capital without resorting to the SBTC hypothesis.