First Published in 2004. Since the second half of the seventies, a period of economic recession, a growing interest for technological change can be noticed in all ‘old’ industrial countries. The reason for this phenomenon is the conviction that the economic future of these countries will depend to a large degree on their ability to create new products and processes and to make these commercially viable. Hence the stimulation and subsidising of all kinds of Research and Development (R&D) activities by the governments of these countries. Against this background it was certainly not unexpected that the IGU Commisson on Industrial Change, presided by Godfrey Linge, decided to organise a congress on ‘Technology and Industrial Change.’ This congress was held in August 1985 at Nijmegen in the Netherlands. In this book some of the papers presented there are published. We are very happy that we were allowed to include the very interesting contributions of the representatives of Philips in Eindhoven and of the European Commission in Brussels.
