Cecilia Rikap
Biographic Data
| ID | 298612 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cecilia Rikap |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cecilia |
| FAMILY NAME | Rikap |
| SIGNATURE | RIKAP C |
| AFFILIATIONS | City, University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4153-4490 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 86 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
‘Digital Public Infrastructure’: Cultural hegemony and states’ technological dependence
I present a critical analysis of ‘Digital Public Infrastructure’ (DPI). Through the example of India's DPI, also called the India Stack, I argue that the promotion of DPI contributes to the expansion of technological dependence on Big Tech companies’ digital infrastructure, transforming not only citizens but also states into their customers. To understand why such a contradictory policy has become so popular, I trace the origin of the term to Bil…
Hundred years of corporate planning. From industrial capitalism to intellectual monopoly capitalism through the lenses of the Harvard Business Review (1922–2021)
This article reopens the issue of corporate planning (CP) by exploring its evolving role in capitalism. We analyze the content of Harvard Business Review from its foundation in 1922 until 2021, using text mining and network analysis techniques. Our results show that CP remains at least as crucial in the age of intellectual monopoly capitalism as in the age of industrial capitalism dominated by the integrated modern corporation. Yet, we identify q…
A green transition orchestrated from Big Tech clouds
Varieties of corporate innovation systems and their interplay with global and national systems: Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft’s strategies to produce and appropriate artificial intelligence
The widely accepted globalization of innovation entails two interrelated undertheo-rized aspects: (1) the capacity of certain firms to orchestrate transnational innovationsystems appropriating successful results, which some have explained with the con-cept of corporate innovation systems (CIS), and (2) the co-existence of such global-ization with those CIS and national innovation systems. I address these mattersanalysing US Big Tech artificial in…
Qu’est-ce que la monopolisation intellectuelle et pourquoi devrions-nous nous en préoccuper
Cet article résume la généalogie de la monopolisation intellectuelle entendue comme la confluence de transformations économiques, politiques, institutionnelles et technologiques. Je m’appuie sur cette explication pour fournir une compréhension dynamique et évolutive de la stratification des entreprises et réfléchir à l’impact d’une telle monopolisation du savoir sur les capacités d’apprentissage de la société
Dependency in the Digital Age? The Experience of Mercado Libre in Latin America
This article uses Mercado Libre, the leading digital platform company in Latin America, as an illustrative case to analyse the effect of regional platforms on development, by considering their interplay with both global leaders and local actors. Building on dependency theory, the article identifies the company's structural dependence on algorithms and computing power provided by the largest information technology (Big Tech) companies in the Unite…
Capitalism As Usual
Responding to Evgeny Morozov’s robust ‘Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason’, Cecilia Rikap outlines the novel forms of intellectual monopoly exercised by tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, reshaping the international capitalist landscape as they subordinate innovation and knowledge production to their sway
Brexit's hidden network of power: Comment of 'Alt-Finance
The expansionary strategies of intellectual monopolies: Google and the digitalization of healthcare
As big tech companies are entering new industrial sectors, an open question concerns the drivers of their expansionary strategies. This paper proposes that these companies are currently entering sectors based on their data-driven intellectual monopoly power, thereby complementing the preliminary answer provided by political economy research which has argued that expansion is driven by their infrastructural power. This approach is developed throug…
From global value chains to corporate production and innovation systems: Exploring the rise of intellectual monopoly capitalism
This article argues that contemporary leading global corporations are intellectual monopolies that base their power on the systematic concentration (and predation) of knowledge which they turn into intangible assets. By monopolizing access to portions of society’s knowledge, these companies’ capacity to plan portions of capitalism exceeds their legally owned assets. The article defines each intellectual monopoly’s sphere of planning as a corporat…
Producing and using artificial intelligence: What can Europe learn from Siemens’s experience
This paper examines the innovation strategy of Siemens, a key player in Europe’s digital economy, by performing network and lexical analyses using data derived from Siemens’s patents and scientific publications since 1998. We observe that the company’s innovation efforts evolved from a broader attempt to develop internal information and communication technology (ICT) capabilities – alongside its historical industrial priorities – to a strategy fo…
Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered
In contemporary global capitalism, the most powerful corporations are innovation or intellectual monopolies. The book’s unique perspective focuses on how private ownership and control of knowledge and data have become a major source of rent and power. The author explains how at the one pole, these corporations concentrate income, property and power in the United States, China, and in a handful of intellectual monopolies, particularly from digital…
Motivations for collaborating with industry: Has public policy influenced new academics in Argentina
Between 2005 and 2015 a series of science, technology and innovation policies were deployed in Argentina among which academic research collaborations with industry was particularly fostered. This paper studies the effect of those policies on newer researchers, defined as those with PhD or postdoctoral scholarships, looking at their motivations to collaborate and, to some extent, at their actual collaborations with Industry. Our hypothesis is that…
Who collects intellectual rents from knowledge and innovation hubs? questioning the sustainability of the singapore model
Big tech, knowledge predation and the implications for development
This paper focuses on tech giants as active drivers of a phase of globalisation characterized by growth in digital services trade combined with a general shift to intangible assets. By analysing how Google, Amazon and Microsoft organize their innovation activities, we show that they continuously monopolize knowledge while outsourcing innovation steps to other firms and research institutions. The paper compares science and technology collaboration…
The direct subordination of universities to the accumulation of capital
Universities have historically contributed to the reproduction of capitalism. However, they have been historically conceived as a separate sphere or institution detached from the Market, thus only indirect participants of capital's accumulation processes. Our aim in this article is precisely to contribute to acknowledge this transformation by further developing a theoretical explanation integrated to a Marxist analysis of contemporary capitalism.…
Asymmetric Power of the Core: Technological Cooperation and Technological Competition in the Transnational Innovation Networks of Big Pharma
This article theoretically and empirically analyzes leader corporations’ innovation processes in contemporary capitalism. We highlight three characteristics: their transnational scope, the primacy of power or asymmetric relations exercised by leaders over the participants of their innovation circuits or networks, and the relevance of what we called technological competition and technological cooperation between leaders. Focusing on the latter, ou…
Regional integration and export diversification in Mercosur: The case of Argentina and Brazil
This article analyses the effects of Argentina’s trade with its MERCOSUR partners in two key periods: 1997/1998 and 2005/2006 —before and after the crises suffered by the economies of this trade zone. The impact of trade on the regionalization of exports and imports was measured by the Regional Orientation Index, which was used by Yeats in his study of these countries for an earlier time period. Our conclusions show that the results obtained by Y…
Big tech, knowledge predation and the implications for development
This paper focuses on tech giants as active drivers of a phase of globalisation characterized by growth in digital services trade combined with a general shift to intangible assets. By analysing how Google, Amazon and Microsoft organize their innovation activities, we show that they continuously monopolize knowledge while outsourcing innovation steps to other firms and research institutions. The paper compares science and technology collaboration…
The expansionary strategies of intellectual monopolies: Google and the digitalization of healthcare
As big tech companies are entering new industrial sectors, an open question concerns the drivers of their expansionary strategies. This paper proposes that these companies are currently entering sectors based on their data-driven intellectual monopoly power, thereby complementing the preliminary answer provided by political economy research which has argued that expansion is driven by their infrastructural power. This approach is developed throug…
Asymmetric Power of the Core: Technological Cooperation and Technological Competition in the Transnational Innovation Networks of Big Pharma
This article theoretically and empirically analyzes leader corporations’ innovation processes in contemporary capitalism. We highlight three characteristics: their transnational scope, the primacy of power or asymmetric relations exercised by leaders over the participants of their innovation circuits or networks, and the relevance of what we called technological competition and technological cooperation between leaders. Focusing on the latter, ou…
Varieties of corporate innovation systems and their interplay with global and national systems: Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft’s strategies to produce and appropriate artificial intelligence
The widely accepted globalization of innovation entails two interrelated undertheo-rized aspects: (1) the capacity of certain firms to orchestrate transnational innovationsystems appropriating successful results, which some have explained with the con-cept of corporate innovation systems (CIS), and (2) the co-existence of such global-ization with those CIS and national innovation systems. I address these mattersanalysing US Big Tech artificial in…
Who collects intellectual rents from knowledge and innovation hubs? questioning the sustainability of the singapore model
The direct subordination of universities to the accumulation of capital
Universities have historically contributed to the reproduction of capitalism. However, they have been historically conceived as a separate sphere or institution detached from the Market, thus only indirect participants of capital's accumulation processes. Our aim in this article is precisely to contribute to acknowledge this transformation by further developing a theoretical explanation integrated to a Marxist analysis of contemporary capitalism.…
Capitalism As Usual
Responding to Evgeny Morozov’s robust ‘Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason’, Cecilia Rikap outlines the novel forms of intellectual monopoly exercised by tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, reshaping the international capitalist landscape as they subordinate innovation and knowledge production to their sway
Producing and using artificial intelligence: What can Europe learn from Siemens’s experience
This paper examines the innovation strategy of Siemens, a key player in Europe’s digital economy, by performing network and lexical analyses using data derived from Siemens’s patents and scientific publications since 1998. We observe that the company’s innovation efforts evolved from a broader attempt to develop internal information and communication technology (ICT) capabilities – alongside its historical industrial priorities – to a strategy fo…
Dependency in the Digital Age? The Experience of Mercado Libre in Latin America
This article uses Mercado Libre, the leading digital platform company in Latin America, as an illustrative case to analyse the effect of regional platforms on development, by considering their interplay with both global leaders and local actors. Building on dependency theory, the article identifies the company's structural dependence on algorithms and computing power provided by the largest information technology (Big Tech) companies in the Unite…
Regional integration and export diversification in Mercosur: The case of Argentina and Brazil
This article analyses the effects of Argentina’s trade with its MERCOSUR partners in two key periods: 1997/1998 and 2005/2006 —before and after the crises suffered by the economies of this trade zone. The impact of trade on the regionalization of exports and imports was measured by the Regional Orientation Index, which was used by Yeats in his study of these countries for an earlier time period. Our conclusions show that the results obtained by Y…
Asymmetric Power of the Core: Technological Cooperation and Technological Competition in the Transnational Innovation Networks of Big Pharma
This article theoretically and empirically analyzes leader corporations’ innovation processes in contemporary capitalism. We highlight three characteristics: their transnational scope, the primacy of power or asymmetric relations exercised by leaders over the participants of their innovation circuits or networks, and the relevance of what we called technological competition and technological cooperation between leaders. Focusing on the latter, ou…
Who collects intellectual rents from knowledge and innovation hubs? questioning the sustainability of the singapore model
Big tech, knowledge predation and the implications for development
This paper focuses on tech giants as active drivers of a phase of globalisation characterized by growth in digital services trade combined with a general shift to intangible assets. By analysing how Google, Amazon and Microsoft organize their innovation activities, we show that they continuously monopolize knowledge while outsourcing innovation steps to other firms and research institutions. The paper compares science and technology collaboration…
The direct subordination of universities to the accumulation of capital
Universities have historically contributed to the reproduction of capitalism. However, they have been historically conceived as a separate sphere or institution detached from the Market, thus only indirect participants of capital's accumulation processes. Our aim in this article is precisely to contribute to acknowledge this transformation by further developing a theoretical explanation integrated to a Marxist analysis of contemporary capitalism.…
Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered
In contemporary global capitalism, the most powerful corporations are innovation or intellectual monopolies. The book’s unique perspective focuses on how private ownership and control of knowledge and data have become a major source of rent and power. The author explains how at the one pole, these corporations concentrate income, property and power in the United States, China, and in a handful of intellectual monopolies, particularly from digital…
Motivations for collaborating with industry: Has public policy influenced new academics in Argentina
Between 2005 and 2015 a series of science, technology and innovation policies were deployed in Argentina among which academic research collaborations with industry was particularly fostered. This paper studies the effect of those policies on newer researchers, defined as those with PhD or postdoctoral scholarships, looking at their motivations to collaborate and, to some extent, at their actual collaborations with Industry. Our hypothesis is that…
From global value chains to corporate production and innovation systems: Exploring the rise of intellectual monopoly capitalism
This article argues that contemporary leading global corporations are intellectual monopolies that base their power on the systematic concentration (and predation) of knowledge which they turn into intangible assets. By monopolizing access to portions of society’s knowledge, these companies’ capacity to plan portions of capitalism exceeds their legally owned assets. The article defines each intellectual monopoly’s sphere of planning as a corporat…
Producing and using artificial intelligence: What can Europe learn from Siemens’s experience
This paper examines the innovation strategy of Siemens, a key player in Europe’s digital economy, by performing network and lexical analyses using data derived from Siemens’s patents and scientific publications since 1998. We observe that the company’s innovation efforts evolved from a broader attempt to develop internal information and communication technology (ICT) capabilities – alongside its historical industrial priorities – to a strategy fo…
Capitalism As Usual
Responding to Evgeny Morozov’s robust ‘Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason’, Cecilia Rikap outlines the novel forms of intellectual monopoly exercised by tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, reshaping the international capitalist landscape as they subordinate innovation and knowledge production to their sway
Brexit's hidden network of power: Comment of 'Alt-Finance
The expansionary strategies of intellectual monopolies: Google and the digitalization of healthcare
As big tech companies are entering new industrial sectors, an open question concerns the drivers of their expansionary strategies. This paper proposes that these companies are currently entering sectors based on their data-driven intellectual monopoly power, thereby complementing the preliminary answer provided by political economy research which has argued that expansion is driven by their infrastructural power. This approach is developed throug…
Varieties of corporate innovation systems and their interplay with global and national systems: Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft’s strategies to produce and appropriate artificial intelligence
The widely accepted globalization of innovation entails two interrelated undertheo-rized aspects: (1) the capacity of certain firms to orchestrate transnational innovationsystems appropriating successful results, which some have explained with the con-cept of corporate innovation systems (CIS), and (2) the co-existence of such global-ization with those CIS and national innovation systems. I address these mattersanalysing US Big Tech artificial in…
Qu’est-ce que la monopolisation intellectuelle et pourquoi devrions-nous nous en préoccuper
Cet article résume la généalogie de la monopolisation intellectuelle entendue comme la confluence de transformations économiques, politiques, institutionnelles et technologiques. Je m’appuie sur cette explication pour fournir une compréhension dynamique et évolutive de la stratification des entreprises et réfléchir à l’impact d’une telle monopolisation du savoir sur les capacités d’apprentissage de la société
Dependency in the Digital Age? The Experience of Mercado Libre in Latin America
This article uses Mercado Libre, the leading digital platform company in Latin America, as an illustrative case to analyse the effect of regional platforms on development, by considering their interplay with both global leaders and local actors. Building on dependency theory, the article identifies the company's structural dependence on algorithms and computing power provided by the largest information technology (Big Tech) companies in the Unite…
Hundred years of corporate planning. From industrial capitalism to intellectual monopoly capitalism through the lenses of the Harvard Business Review (1922–2021)
This article reopens the issue of corporate planning (CP) by exploring its evolving role in capitalism. We analyze the content of Harvard Business Review from its foundation in 1922 until 2021, using text mining and network analysis techniques. Our results show that CP remains at least as crucial in the age of intellectual monopoly capitalism as in the age of industrial capitalism dominated by the integrated modern corporation. Yet, we identify q…
A green transition orchestrated from Big Tech clouds
‘Digital Public Infrastructure’: Cultural hegemony and states’ technological dependence
I present a critical analysis of ‘Digital Public Infrastructure’ (DPI). Through the example of India's DPI, also called the India Stack, I argue that the promotion of DPI contributes to the expansion of technological dependence on Big Tech companies’ digital infrastructure, transforming not only citizens but also states into their customers. To understand why such a contradictory policy has become so popular, I trace the origin of the term to Bil…
Business (10 works) · Economics (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Capitalism (7 works) · Innovation and Knowledge Management (7 works) · Market economy (6 works) · Industrial organization (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works)