What is General Purpose Technology (GPT)

Developments in nanotechnology have drawn the attention of governments, industry, academia and the public for their potential industrial benefits and their future trends within the innovation domain. The perception that nanotechnology promises important changes holds a rare opportunity to policy-making in its early stages. Understanding nanotechnology innovation process represents a crucial element for designing and implementing relevant, coherent and adequate innovation policy. This chapter proposes the development of an analytical framework to investigate nanotechnology paths. Results suggested that what has been generically labeled as ‘nanotechnology' actually comprises a set of different, but complementary, technologies that may be represented as particular ‘nanotechnological systems of innovation' to be used for analytical and policy designing purposes. The study attempts to contribute for the development of nanotechnology innovation indicators aiming to provide policy-makers with helpful data to support innovation policy design and foster nanotechnology development in Brazil.