This work prepared for B. Hall and N. Rosenberg (eds.) Handbook of Innovation, Elsevier (2010), lays out the basic … evidence concerning the nature and structure of technological knowledge the sources of novel opportunities, the dynamics … the firm in industries where technological and organizational innovation is important. Indeed a large literature has grown …

interpretative achievements stemming from e.g. the economics of innovation, industrial economics, epistemilogy of knowledge, economic …

and in particular of Intellectual Property Right (IPR) as incentives for technological innovation. We start with a … critical discussion of the standard justification of the attribution of IPR in terms of "market failures" in knowledge … generation. Such an approach we argue misses important features of technological knowledge and also neglects the importance of …

rates of innovation. Indeed, there is circumstantial evidence to the opposite. And, indeed, a sound theoretic consideration … of the nature of technological knowledge and the drivers of its accumulation fully reveals the limitation, possible even … both theory and historical experience suggest that loose and limited IPR are most conducive to knowledge accumulation and …