Innovation Economics, Engineering and Management Handbook 1. Группа авторов

Innovation Economics, Engineering and Management Handbook 1 - Группа авторов


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of research and development, marketing and financial projects, etc.

      This book is dedicated to the study of innovation. Theoretical reminders are associated with the discussion of concepts. Written in a didactic way, the reader will easily be able to situate the current debates around the need for technological and social innovation and the imperative of creating a climate conducive to the launch of large-scale innovation processes, because the current socio-economic stakes are as important as they are global. The book consists of two volumes. The first one is devoted to the presentation of the basic concepts. Its aim is to provide a broad and precise overview of the fundamental issues addressed by economists, historians and engineers specializing in innovation. The second volume contains a set of studies of current concepts and opens the debate on the evolution of the concept of innovation in the years to come.

      The innovation process has a causal relationship with a problem – technological, economic, social – posed to the market economy and identified consciously or unconsciously by its actors (companies, entrepreneurs, consumers, etc.). Innovation is thus linked to the search for the optimal solution to the problem posed. This presupposes the use of knowledge and information from practice, experience and scientific activity. Innovation is itself a cumulative and historical process defined by six major characteristics highlighted in this book: (a) the impacts of innovation are difficult to predict; (b) the scale of diffusion of innovation is difficult to calculate; (c) innovative activities are asymmetric and staggered in time; (d) the time of learning, execution and diffusion plays a crucial role in the act of innovating; (e) the business environment conditions the time, scale, nature and impacts of innovation; and (f) innovations are interdependent.

      The richness of this book is the result of the reflections developed within the Research Network on Innovation (RNI) and carefully selected to take into account current and historical analyses, the relationship between technological mutations and social change, and the presentation and perspective of management, strategies and innovation policies. The authors are among the most eminent specialists of the Network, whose main objectives are the study of innovation processes in today’s information and knowledge society, the analysis of the intensification of links between the worlds of research and business, and the examination of the modes of appropriation and management of innovation by companies from a global as well as local or sectoral perspective. The Network has more than 1,500 researchers in 36 countries specializing in the multidisciplinary study of innovation: economics, management, engineering, sociology, history, law, epistemology, anthropology and psychology of the innovator.

      The guiding principle of the studies presented in the two volumes allows us to understand the systemic nature of innovations and to reflect on their potential for dissemination and application, to study how innovations question our categories of thought and challenge the traditional mapping of knowledge... to think about the meaning of innovation.

       – Innovation Engines: Entrepreneurs and Enterprises in a Turbulent World (2017).

       – Science, Technology and Innovation Culture (2018);

       – Collective Innovation Processes: Principles and Practices (2018);

      Divided across two volumes, it is composed of four long chapters on epistemology, economics, management and engineering that trace the contours of the holistic conception of innovation and continues with 81 shorter chapters that present and discuss, according to the sensitivity of their authors, the key notions associated with the studies of innovation. Note that the last chapter of Volume 1 on “X-Innovation” is devoted to highlighting the complexity of the concept in order to open perspectives for future research on innovation.

      We would like to thank our colleagues Sophie Boutillier (University of the Littoral Opal Coast), Thierry Burger-Helmchen (University of Strasbourg), Vanessa Casadella (University of Picardie), Joëlle Forest (National Institution of Applied Sciences, Lyon), Michaël Laviolette (University of Lyon), Laure Morel (University of Lorraine), Francesco Schiavone (Parthenope University of Naples), Bérangère Szostak (University of Lorraine) and Corinne Tanguy (AgroSup-Dijon) for their contribution to the conception of this book.

      We express our gratitude to our colleague Laurent Adatto for his contribution to the finalization of this important project.

      Finally, it is important to mention the contribution of our colleague Blandine Laperche, President of the Research Network on Innovation, to the realization of this project. We express our gratitude and best wishes to her.

      Introduction written by Dimitri UZUNIDIS and Fedoua KASMI.

      1

      Economy – Innovation Economics and the Dynamics of Interactions

      1.1. Introduction

      Capitalism cannot and will never be stationary, Schumpeter once said. In a process of “creative destruction”, the technologies of the present become obsolete, while innovations emerge and feed new economic cycles. Economic history (Braudel 1979) clearly shows new combinations of production factors: products, production processes, sources of raw materials and semi-finished products, organization of work and markets. In short, innovations have fueled economic growth. Since the 18th century, a number of economists, such as A. Smith, J.B. Say, D. Ricardo, T.R. Malthus, K. Marx, etc., have provided the conceptual bases on which the economic theories of innovation have been developed.

      Innovation economics was born in the wake of the industrial economy, in the aftermath of World War II. The neoclassical approach first considered technical progress as an exogenous phenomenon, a residue of the production function in models of economic growth (Solow 1956, 1957), and the economists were mainly interested in its effects on the economy, especially on employment. But the recognition of its role in economic growth and evolution, in the wake of the work of J.A. Schumpeter, led them to study in greater detail the mechanisms of its genesis, at the micro, meso and macro levels.


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