This paper discusses the role of so-called national champions within the context of the EU's ambitious goal to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economic region in the world by 2010. We find football to be a useful analogy in our discussion of national champions. There are...

Do firm entry and exit improve the competitiveness of regions? If so, is this a universal mechanism or is it contingent on the type of industry or region in which creative destruction takes place? This paper analyses the effect of firm entry and exit on the competitiveness of regions, measured...

This paper investigates the relevance of government purchasing behavior for innovation-based economic growth. We construct a parsimonious Schumpeterian growth model in which demand from the public sphere can effectively alter the economy's rate of technological change. We incorporate results of...

The economic literature started to recognize the heterogeneity characterizing the nature of different technologies, introducing the concept of General Purpose Technologies. In this paper, we offer a new view of General Purpose Technologies, building on the historical as well as on the recent...

This paper deals with innovative activities of firms, the resulting market success as well as the interdependencies between both. In a first theoretical part, different cases of those interdependencies are investigated by the way of a simple model based on replicator dynamics. It is shown that...

We attempt to extend the static analysis of innovator networks by providing case study based insights into the dynamic, developmental or evolutionary pattern of such networks. In the theoretical part, we develop some building blocs that are considered central to a theory of network evolution....

The paper aims to investigate the diffusion process of two competing innovative technologies in the health care sector. Novelties in cardiovascular surgery will serve as an example. Using a rather simple modeling approach for the decisions of adopters and suppliers we simulate the evolution of a...

The flow of knowledge through interaction between innovative actors is central to the systemic view of innovation. We review the literature on interaction and innovator networks with a focus on regional aspects. To illustrate the relevance of these relations, we apply social network analysis...

This paper presents a History Friendly Model which addresses the issue of the bifurcation in technological styles" between US and Britain during the nineteenth century. The model aims at gaining a better understanding of the micro-dynamics that gave rise to different patterns of innovation in...