Local R&D Capacity Building Strategies in the Two Decades Prior to the Great Recession of 2008: The Case of ICTs in Spain

Abstract

This article analyses the standardisation of business R&D in a technologically dependent country -Spain-, in a high technology sector -telecommunications and electronics -and in a key stage of its journey, marked by a double process of rapid technological change and intense liberalisation. Focused on the key telecommunications company - CTNE/Telefónica - but attentive to the general framework, its purpose is to explore from a business perspective whether the semi-public telecommunications monopoly company -Telefónica- strengthened the predominant R&D model in Spain or contributed to correct it, in a context of modernization and growth of the Spanish economy and with an eye on the foreign market. It seeks to explore, in this way, the effects of strategies to boost local R&D capabilities in telecommunications and in some of the explanatory causes of the difficulties encountered. The article, with a clear interdisciplinary approach and descriptive orientation, is based primarily on exceptional primary sources, which allow both to verify results and reveal the gestation of policies.