The Activities and Functions of Innovation Systems: A Step Towards a General Theory of Innovation?

Abstract:

The system of innovation approach’ has been prominent in innovation research for more than three decades. In this paper, we ask whether this work has taken us closer to what could be called a ‘general theory’ of innovation. We argue that there is now a considerable literature addressing what happens in the innovation systems (and not only which elements and components they include). This literature places the focus on the causes of innovations in terms of functions and activities in the systems. Analysing this literature, including the several studies on activities and functions, is the focus in this paper. We aim to find out whether the work on activities and functions can be seen as a step towards developing a general theory of innovation. We argue that as a ‘collective research community’, we have already tried to do this, and that we have made some progress. We indicate how such work can continue to develop the systems of innovation ‘approach’ into a ‘theory’. However, such a formal and general theory of innovation remains yet to be developed. In this paper, we aim to outline one direction in which such work can potentially be pursued