Demand conditions, access to foreign knowledge and technological change: evidence from India's spinning machinery manufacturing

This paper examines the technological change in spinning machinery manufacturing in India. This is accomplished by employing the sectoral system of innovation framework that identifies three important building blocks - technological regimes, demand conditions and the lead actor - in the spinning machinery manufacturing. The paper underscores that Lakshmi machine works limited (LMW) - the lead manufacturer of spinning machinery - explains most of innovations occurred in the spinning machinery manufacturing. The favourable demand conditions and the access to foreign knowledge via long-term international collaborations are crucial to the innovation accomplishment by the lead actor. Nevertheless, because of the imports of advanced spinning machinery and the second-hand spinning machinery in particular, the technological success of spinning machinery manufacturing is restricted to the conventional spinning machinery, i.e. ring spinning machinery, not to the advanced spinning machinery (e.g. rotor and air-jet spinning).