For 'Habermas and social capital'

From a book edited by Putnam on social capital, I want to borrow a rhetorical device used by Skocpol. 'The argument in this chapter is sufficiently novel so I provide the contour of the argument clearly in advance'.

Use Anna's response to the ideas in a footnote as an anecdotal evidence of the plausibility of them. Her hesitation I interpret as a recognition of the plausibility of the ideas. If Marquez can draw from observations and conversations in her extended family as fodders for his novels, I can certainly draw from conversations with colleagues as well.

For Joana on technological development in late developer

K Sims Gallagher from Belfer Center, Harvard, wrote a book on China's attempt to wrestle technology from foreign auto manufacturers through various joint ventures. In this attempt, China also want to `leapfrog' other manufacturers at the same time. Her verdict seems to be that this attempt is currently unfruitful for various reasons. The book is `China shifts gear'.
This attempt at wrestling technology in the transport sector is also being done in a much larger scale as reported in the current edition of the Economist.

I think Gallagher and others failed to ask the right questions [esp 2 questions] in trying to understand China's attempts. This lack of understanding will hamper assessment of the likelihood of success or failure. First set of questions: networks of actors [firms, government bodies, universities etc], how are they together being involved in this attempt? What are the broken gateways or unconnected or inanimated subnetworks? Joana should be able to answer this.
Second set: is there soemthing inherent in the technological acquisition or development path of automotive industries which prevents or hold back `leapfrogging'? Have automotive technologies deep roots and wide base or prerequsites? A way to understand this is to ask the same question about elctronics industry which have shallower technological `roots', so to speak. And to answer this one needs to `map' technological paths or profiles in these automotive and electronics industries. This exercise may be promising as I am not aware of anyone doing anything about it at the moment.

Ideas of collaboration with Jie Shin

The UK Innovation Survey, as part of the Community Innovation Survey, has been running for 5 waves[ie 10 years]. Maybe similar survey can be done in Taiwan for comparative studies.