Richard R. Nelson, George Blumenthal Professor Emeritus of International and Public Affairs, Business and Law at Columbia University, has been award the 2006 Honda Prize for his pioneering research on technology and history.
Nelson will be the 27th laureate of the prize, and is currently responsible for Center for Science Technology and Global Development of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
Nelson has consistently paid deep attention to technological and institutional history with profound concerns for the role of technology in society. He is a pioneer in the field of economics of innovation — an academic research to study industrial and economic growth and deterioration in their inextricable relation to innovations in technology and social institutions.
The publication of his hallmark, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Nelson & Winter, 1982), has spawned a multitude of research programs. It is considered by many one of the most seminal academic contributions that has helped economic and societal improvements in developing as well as developed parts of the world.
The 27th award ceremony for the Honda Prize will be held at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo on November 17, 2006, commemorating the 100th birthday of late Soichiro Honda. In addition to the certificate and prize medal, Nelson will receive an extra prize of 10 million yen.
Since 1979 Honda Foundation has advocated it as a guiding concept for future society to make human technological advances increasingly compatible with the earth environment.
