Measuring Innovation System Functions: A Survey of Additive Manufacturing in South Africa
通过调查南非40家增材制造企业（约占行业80%），提出一种分析创新系统的新方法和优先工具，识别需要政策支持的领域，发现企业面临技术获取和知识网络建设困难。
As additive manufacturing technology is growing globally, a need exists to better understand the landscape of needs, challenges, and opportunities that enterprises experience to assist policymakers in developing practical and sufficient support policies. This paper draws from the literature on the technology innovation system's innovation indicators to understand the dynamics of South African AM enterprises. From the indicators, we derive a survey instrument that contributes a novel method to analyze innovation systems and a priority tool to identify areas that require priority policy support. In applying the survey instrument, we surveyed forty South African AM enterprises (approximately 80% of the industry) and collected 35 complete responses. The findings show that most AM enterprises are younger than ten years and that value-added enterprises dominate the sector. The enterprises struggle to access support mechanisms for AM technology, and startup enterprises struggle to build appropriate knowledge networks. Based on the priority tool, this paper argues for fourteen policy support opportunities on how AM industries may address their enterprises’ commercialization, knowledge sharing, and supplier challenges