Demographic aging is among the most striking challenges industrialized economies face; it will lead to profound changes in consumption structures. How these changes will affect innovation, however, is thus far not well understood. In this paper we strive to make a first step towards closing this gap...

In this context, higher education as well as research and development (R&D) have long since ceased to be purely the domain of the developed Western economies. Numerous regions of the world, some in the emerging markets in particular – the often-cited BRIC countries – are catching...

Structural changes and budget constraints are challenging German higher education institutions to change their management practices. This exploratory analysis discusses how institutions are increasing their collaborative efforts – and are doing so in a more structured way – with...

This paper reviews three strands of the innovation literature that have presented innovation as a distributed process that combines knowledge of users, designers and manufacturers: user innovations, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and the study of consumption. These literatures have...

This paper explores the work of Ludwik Fleck and its applicability for the analysis of innovation in complex technical systems. The objectives of the paper are twofold. First, it strives to bring Ludwik Fleck back on the map of technology analysis. For this purpose, it develops a Fleckian...

This paper explores the concept of technological paradigms in the context of complex technical systems. It presents a review of Thomas Kuhn's notion of scientific paradigms and their early adoption as technological paradigms. This review reveals that an important feature of scientific paradigms...

The literatures on 'varieties of capitalism' (VoC) and 'national innovation systems' (NIS) propose very similar arguments about how firms require different types of labour qualifications to pursue strategies of radical product innovation (RPI), incremental product innovation (IPI), and product...