Advances and challenges in innovation studies

Abstract

The article discusses recent advances and future challenges in innovation studies. First, it separately considers four main strands of research, studying innovation at the organizational, systemic, sectoral and macroeconomic levels. Then, considering the field as a whole, the article points to the existence of important neglected topics and methodological challenges for future research. In fact, several fundamental issues are still unexplored, such as the co-evolution between technological and institutional change; the role of demand; and the impacts of innovation on individual and collective welfare. There are also important methodological challenges, such as the need for more systematic interactions between the different levels of analysis; the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of technological and institutional changes; and the search for a combination of contingent explanations based on case studies with general analytical results based on econometric and formal models.