(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-09)
Baskaran, Angathevar; Muchie, Mammo
In this paper an attempt will be made to identify what has been explicitly recognised
as central and peripheral within the systems of innovation concept; the inclusion or
exclusion of the factors that are important in understanding the political economy of
innovation systems; the themes, issues and range of actors and spaces that must be
included in NSI types of appreciative theory or modelling. We suspect that those who
focus narrowly tend to exclude important variables that must be included in the
understanding of the making and development of innovation systems. Conversely
those who focus broadly may include factors that may not be helpful in creating
clarity of conception and understanding of the innovation systems application to the
problems and challenges of development.
It is thus important to reflect and review the variety of ways the system of innovation
has been used by the economists who have used the NSI perspective in their search to
develop alternative frameworks to understand the problems and challenges of
economic system dynamics in general and economic development in particular. We
will probe how the search for an alternative economic framework for economic
development through the NSI perspective have been applied with a view to advance
an argument for its judicious application as an intellectual conceptual tool to help
understanding and explanation of the problems and challenges of development and
underdevelopment.
A unified conception of systems of innovation that includes not only history and
culture but also the critical political factor that closely impinges and shapes policies
on the economics of innovation will be attempted with a view to valorise the
explanatory analytical power of the NSI framework in the context of its value in
generating new insights, practices and applications to the general problem of
economic development.