The Nature of Technological Change and Its Main Implications on National and Local Systems of Innovation
Abstract
This paper aims at providing a survey (by no means exhaustive) of evolutionary theorizing, where by this we mean all the contributions which possess the methodological building blocks of an evolutionary theory, which this approach identifies as the consideration of dynamics, the presence of microfounded theories, the assumption of bounded rationality and of heterogeneity among agents, the recognition of the continuous appearance of novelty, the view of collective interactions as selection mechanisms, and finally the consideration of aggregate phenomena as emergent properties with nonstable nature. Along this path through the linkages from the micro technological studies to a broad aggregate system, we propose a concept and representation of Innovation Systems -national, regional, sectoral and at the micro levels- whereby their main feature will be related to capture empirically some pieces of the evolutionary approach.