Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to highlight new understandings of innovation as an interactive process in relation to economic growth. The resulting ideas could be of considerable interest to innovation policy makers. Two impacts are of considerable potential importance. The first relates to the absorption of complex and evolutionary systems dynamics ideas into the study of innovation, and growth. The second relates to the synthesis of complex systems ideas with evolutionary models of innovation, and growth. Considering innovation as a complex multi-level process means that it is not possible to devise the context into independent ways and that it is not enough to provide policymakers with simple solutions, but it should help them formulate and address questions that are appropriate to the evolutionary and complex context within which they operate.
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Notes
- 1.
Adam Smith did recognize the great importance of science and technology, even if List (1841) had strongly criticized him and other classical economists for what he perceived as their neglect of technology and skills, that’s they did not consistently give it the prominence which List thought that it merited (Freeman 2002).
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Principle of system hierarchy.
- 5.
For a firm the trajectory is determined by large-scale, often global, trends in demand and technological opportunity which are usually uncertain and at best involve risk for the firms.
- 6.
See Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth BIS economic paper n.15 dic 2011.
- 7.
New Growth Theory (NGT) is the view that technological change is essentially an economic phenomenon, or at least explicable in economic terms. Furthermore, the mechanics of economic growth emphasized by NOT captures the traditional idea of uneven growth: some sectors generate more economic growth than others, for example through the creation of new knowledge.
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In the 1991 the World Bank in our report has established that “it is intangible investment in knowledge accumulation, which is decisive in the economic growth rather than physical capital investment” (Freeman 2002).
- 9.
Nelson and others have pointed to the complementarity of all these variables. “The contribution of capital accumulation to growth depends not only on its quantity but on its quality, on the direction of investment, on the skills of entrepreneurs and the labour Force in the exploitation of new investment, on the presence (or absence) of social overhead capital and so forth (Freeman 2002).
- 10.
In short when economics are out of equilibrium they stay out of equilibrium. But they always exhibit order and that order reflects, and might be measured in terms of processes of interaction and the patterns of co-ordination that ensue.
- 11.
“The origins of the systems concept, applied to innovation, lie in the concept of national systems of innovation (Freeman 1987; Nelson 1988; Ludvall 1992). The concept emerged as an alternative way to explain the innovation process, improving on an earlier view that considered this process as a simple linear progression of scientific research” (Iizuka 2013, p. 2).
- 12.
“Innovation is thus the result of a complex interaction between various actors and institutions. Technical change does not occur in a perfectly linear sequence, but through feedback loops within this system. In the centre of this system are the firms, the way they organise production and innovation and the channels by which they gain access to external sources of knowledge. These sources might be other firms, public and private research institutes, universities or transfer institutions—regional, national or international. Here, the innovative firm is seen as operating within a complex network of co-operating and competing firms and other institutions, building on a range of joint ventures and close linkages with suppliers and customers” (OECD 1997, p. 12).
- 13.
For a deep overview see Shulin (1999).
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Bruno, B., Faggini, M., Parziale, A. (2018). Innovation Policies: Strategy of Growth in a Complex Perspective. In: Barile, S., Pellicano, M., Polese, F. (eds) Social Dynamics in a Systems Perspective. New Economic Windows. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61967-5_4
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