Editorial: Going Beyond the Hard Core of Innovation: Non-Technological and Non-Economic Dimensions of Innovation Systems
International Journal of Innovation and Regional Development, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1-11, 2011
11 Pages Posted: 13 Oct 2011 Last revised: 7 May 2012
Abstract
Against the background of the current ‘technology goes economic market’ focus of mainstream innovation research, this editorial introduces contributions to a special issue explicitly devoted to the corresponding research gap: non-technological and non-economic innovations are indeed hardly explored; even approaches focusing on non-technological or social innovations still have a strong bias towards the economy. In contrast to both the mainstream and these alternative approaches to innovation, the editorial outlines a concept of socially robust innovations, i.e., innovations that have impact on both economic and non-economic spheres of society, and that can therefore be supposed to be more profitable in terms of, again, both economic and non-economic profit.
Keywords: systems of innovation, non-technological innovation, NTI, social dimension of innovation, robust innovation
JEL Classification: A14, O31
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation