Social innovation is once more an increasingly popular notion circulating as an apparent means to solve the Grand Challenges of the 21st Century. But this common-sense idea of social innovation is based on a quasi-concept, where processes of innovation are absent. To restore some academic rigour...

This paper develops and tests a model of differing trends in international competitiveness and economic growth across countries. The model relates the development of market shares at home and abroad to three sets of factors: the ability to compete in technology, the ability to compete in...

During the 1950s and 1960s, a coherent system of economic policies was implemented in Norway. The article analyses the origins and functioning of this Norwegian model and shows how it broke down under the influence of both external and internal pressures from the mid-1970s onwards. By the early...

The term 'innovation policy' started to penetrate the policy discourse a few decades ago and it may be time to take stock of what is learnt and consider what the challenges for the theory and practice in this area are. This paper contributes to this process by focusing on the extent to which we...

This paper analyzes factors shaping technological capabilities in United States and European countries, and shows that the differences between the two continents in this respect are much smaller than commonly assumed. The analysis demonstrates a tendency towards convergence in technological...

Some universities and departments have been very successful in stimulating university spin-off firms (USOs). This has persuaded policy makers and university administrators to devote considerable resources to improve universities' capabilities to promote USOs, but with little tangible results....

Many countries have a sector of research institutes that have been set up to promote industrial growth and help with users’ problem solving. Not formally part of the higher education sector, research institutes are significantly less understood and studied than universities. This paper and...

The European Economy is currently in a slump, the worst since the 1930s. Although this is often seen as a consequence of the financial crisis that hit the capitalist world in 2007-8, we argue that many of the problems that Europe faces today have long term roots to do with the fact that Europe...

There is no shortage of syntheses or overviews on specific topics within innovation studies. Much more rare are attempts to synthesize the syntheses, i.e., cover the entire area of innovation studies, emphasize the achievements that have been made, discuss the implications for policy and point...

This paper reviews the literature on technology and competitiveness. First, the concept of the international competitiveness of a country, and various theoretical approaches on the relationship between trade and growth, are discussed. Then a number of empirical studies of the impact of...