Why innovation outcomes differ among defence innovation systems: a comparative study of radar innovation in Sweden and Australia

Abstract

Why do nations at comparable stages of economic development, with comparable political systems and with access to comparable technologies perform differently in generating novel solutions to similar requirements for military capability? To address this question the thesis compared case studies of radar-based innovation in Sweden and Australia during the Cold War. The case studies were organised around the "building blocks" of a defence sectoral system of innovation which comprised institutions, actors and networks, military doctrine, technology and the exercise of demand. Development of innovative surveillance radars in, respectively, Sweden and Australia was then used to show how the functioning of those building blocks influenced the performance of the Swedish and Australian innovation systems. The performance of each system was then compared in terms of the time each took to develop their respective radars, the cost they incurred in doing so and the development/diffusion of those radars after their acceptance into Swedish and Australian service respectively. The comparison showed that distinctive features of each country's defence sectoral innovation system caused Australia to take longer than Sweden to develop a broad area surveillance radar, to incur higher costs in doing so, to pursue a narrower path of post-acceptance development of the radar and to impose more stringent constraints on the diffusion of the resulting technology. The thesis makes a novel contribution to the literature on, and to the management of, military technological innovation in terms of the subject addressed, the methodology used and the conclusions reached.