Systems of Innovation

Technologies, Institutions and Organizations

Charles Edquist, Charles Edquist

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136600586
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Business General

The systems of innovation approach is considered by many to be a useful analytical approach for better understanding innovation processes as well as the production and distribution of knowledge in the economy. It is an appropriate framework for the empirical study of innovations in their contexts and is relevant for policy makers. This text is the result of the work within an international inter-disciplinary network or "working seminar" with the task of building a more solid and sophisticated conceptual and theoretical foundation for the continued study of innovations in a systemic context. The book has three parts. The first presents an overview and tries to work out some conceptual problems. In the second, the systems of innovation approach is related to innovation theory. Part three is devoted to increasing understanding of the functioning and dynamics of systems of innovation. There is also an introduction where the genesis and anatomy of different systems of innovation approaches are discussed and where the systems of innovation approach is characterized in nine dimensions.

CHAPTER ONE

---

Systems of Innovation Approaches — Their Emergence and Characteristics

Charles Edquist

1. Introduction¹

It is almost universally accepted that technological change and other kinds of innovations are the most important sources of productivity growth and increased material welfare — and that this has been so for centuries. They are also a major cause of the destruction of old jobs as well as the creation of new employment.² ‘Systems of innovation’ is a new approach for the study of innovations in the economy that has emerged during the last decade. In this introduction I will discuss reasons why this approach is fruitful for studying innovation and technical change, and highlight some insights the approach provides into economic development. I will also review the historical development of the approach, outline its characteristics, and address the major arguments presented in this volume.

Innovations are new creations of economic significance. They may be brand new but are more often new combinations of existing elements. Innovations may be of various kinds (e.g., technological and organizational). The processes through which technological innovations emerge are extremely complex; they have to do with the emergence and diffusion of knowledge elements (i.e., with scientific and technological possibilities), as well as the ‘translation’ of these into new products and production processes. This translation by no means follows a ‘linear’ path from basic research to applied research and further to the development and implementation of new processes and new products. Instead, it is characterized by complicated feedback mechanisms and interactive relations involving science, technology, learning, production, policy, and demand.

Innovation processes occur over time and are influenced by many factors. Because of this complexity, firms almost never innovate in isolation. In the pursuit of innovation they interact with other organizations to gain, develop, and exchangevarious kinds of knowledge, information, and other resources. These organizations might be other firms (suppliers, customers, competitors) but also universities, research institutes, investment banks, schools, government ministries, etc. Through their innovative activities firms often establish relations with each other and other kinds of organizations; therefore it does not make sense to regard innovating firms as isolated, individual decision-making units.

The behavior of firms is also shaped by institutions that constitute constraints and/or incentives for innovation, such as laws, health regulations, cultural norms, social rules, and technical standards. Interaction between various organizations operating in different institutional contexts is important for processes of innovation. The actors as well as these contextual factors are all elements of systems for the creation and use of knowledge for economic purposes. Innovations emerge in such systems.

If we want to describe, understand, explain — and perhaps influence — processes of innovation, we must take all important factors shaping and influencing innovations into account. The systems of innovation approach — in its various forms — is designed to do this. Attempts to understand the structure and dynamics of such systems are at the core of modern thinking about innovation processes.

However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Only general arguments for the fruitfulness of the systems of innovation approach can be presented here. It is the use of the approach, in research and in policy, that proves its usefulness, as compared to other approaches.

This book as a whole concentrates upon resolving issues of three kinds:

• sorting out some conceptual problems associated with the systems of innovation approach;
• relating the systems of innovation approach to innovation theories;³
• increasing our understanding of the dynamics of systems of innovation.

Each of these themes are dealt with in one of the three parts of the book.

In section 2 of the introduction I will address the genesis and theoretical origins of the different systems of innovation approaches, relate the variants to each other, and deal with some of the basic concepts and their meaning. Section 3 points out nine common characteristics of the various systems of innovation approaches. In doing so, it also identifies the main strengths and weaknesses of the approach, as it has been developed so far. A review of issues addressed in the three parts of the book will be presented in section 4 of this introduction.⁴

2. Various systems of innovation approaches: their genesis and anatomy

Since the objective of this book is to contribute to the development of the systems of innovation approach, it is important to review the historical basis of our arguments. In this section, the genesis of different coexisting approaches to the study of systems of innovation are briefly outlined and their main conceptual components are discussed. This means that I will relate the arguments addressed in this book to previous literature, requiring that the scope of the introduction be wider than that of the remaining chapters. However, as space does not allow a complete account of the previous literature, I have left out many predecessors to the systems of innovation approach. While this review will selectively concentrate upon some of the most important contributions to the field, it has not been easy to decide which to include and which to leave aside.

2.1. The emergence of the systems of innovation approaches

According to Christopher Freeman (1995:5), the first person to use the expression ‘national system of innovation’ was Bengt-Åke Lundvall (Freeman, 1995: 5). He suggested the term be adopted as a title for part 5 in Dosi et al. (1988). In addition to constituting the title the term was used in several chapters in that book.⁵ However, in published form, the expression was first used by Chris Freeman himself in his book on technology policy and economic performance in Japan (Freeman, 1987).

In the early 1990s two major books on national systems of innovation were published. These were edited by Bengt-Åke Lundvall (Lundvall, 1992) and Richard Nelson (Nelson, 1993).⁶ A perspective that is similar in important respects has been developed within a research program led by Bo Carlsson (Carlsson, 1995). Carlsson and his colleagues talk about ‘technological systems’. They argue that these are specific for various technology fields, and hence their approach is sectoral rather than national. It may sometimes also be useful to talk about regional (or local) systems of innovation. Despite their different emphases, the various perspectives also hold important similarities which allow them to be clustered together as variants of a more general and broadly encompassing systems of innovation approach.

The various publications mentioned above are by no means the only ones using the systems of innovation approach. Its diffusion has been surprisingly fast. In academic circles it is now widely used, and has already been the subject dominating a special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics.⁷ The approach is also very much used in a policy context — by national governments as well as by international organizations like the OECD and the European Union. The approach seems to be very attractive to policy-makers who look for alternative frameworks for understanding differences between economies and various ways to support technological change and innovation.

Let me very briefly describe and contrast the national approaches of Nelson and Lundvall and present the ‘technological systems’ and the regional approaches.⁸

The book by Nelson entitled National Systems of Innovation: A Comparative Study (1993), includes case studies of the national systems of innovation in fifteen countries, written mostly by authors who are residents of those countries. In the various chapters of this book, different authors interpret the concept of ‘national system of innovation’ in different ways — explicitly or implicitly. Two general chapters are also included: an introductory chapter (Nelson and Rosenberg, 1993) which outlines the process of technical advance and the key institutions involved, and a concluding chapter (by Richard Nelson), which draws some conclusions from the whole exercise. This book essentially emphasizes empirical evidence: ‘the orientation of this project has been to carefully describe and compare, and try to understand, rather than to theorize first and then attempt to prove or calibrate the theory’ (Nelson and Rosenberg, 1993: 4).

The Lundvall book is quite different in orientation from the Nelson one, but it is complementary. As indicated by the title, National Systems of Innovation: Towards a Theory of Innovation and Interactive Learning, this book is theoretically oriented, with some chapters being exclusively concerned with theoretical issues. To the extent that the arguments are empirically based or illustrated, one country (Denmark) is usually referred to. In some chapters there is also a ‘thematic’ rather than ‘country’ approach, in that one aspect (such as export specialization) is studied for all OECD countries. One of the aims of the book is to demonstrate the need for developing an alternative to the neoclassical economics tradition by placing interactive learning and innovation at the center of analysis (Lundvall, 1992: 1). Most of the chapters are written by scholars belonging to the IKE Research Group at Aalborg University, Denmark.⁹

The ‘technological systems’ approach was developed within the framework of a five-year research program of Sweden's Technological Systems and Future Development Potential led by Bo Carlsson.¹⁰ The program deals with theoretical aspects of the study of technological systems as well as empirical studies of specific systems like factory automation, electronics and computers, pharmaceuticals, and powder technology. Although Carlsson and his colleagues do not use the same ‘language’ (‘system of innovation’), their ‘technological systems’ approach is — as will be shown in later sections — quite similar in several respects.¹¹

A regional perspective on innovation and industrial development has also been widely used, although the term ‘regional system of innovation’ as such might be less common. One example is AnnaLee Saxenian's analysis of ‘regional industrial systems’ which focus on Silicon Valley, California and Route 128, Massachusetts (Saxenian 1994). Other examples are analyzes in terms of ‘industrial districts’ from Alfred Marshall on. The phrase ‘regional innovation system’ is also being increasingly used. This is indicated in Cooke (1996), which includes an analysis of the origins of the concept. The regional approach is addressed by Ellinor Ehrnberg and Staffan Jacobsson in chapter 14 of this volume.

2.2. Theoretical origins of the systems of innovation approaches

Although the systems of innovation approach is not considered a formal and established theory here,¹² its development has been influenced by different theories of innovation such as interactive learning theories and evolutionary theories. What follows is a very brief discussion of some theoretical roots of the systems of innovation approaches.

Lundvall's (1992) book is an attempt explicitly to relate the national systems of innovation approach to innovation theory. In it, contributing authors from Aalborg University, Denmark, have placed their own previously developed innovation theories into a national systems of innovation conceptual framework. This theory stresses processes of learning and user-producer interaction.¹³ In Lundvall's words:

One of our starting-points is that innovation is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the mode...

Índice

• Cover
• Systems of Innovation
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1. Systems of Innovation Approaches - Their Emergence and Characteristics
• Part I Systems of Innovation: Overview and Basic Concepts
• Part II Innovation Systems: Evolutionary Perspectives
• Part III Systems Transformation: Technological and Institutional Change
• Subject Index
• Name Index