Coordinators: Andreas Pyka and Jackie Krafft
Email: a.pyka@uni-hohenheim.de, jackie.krafft@gredeg.cnrs.fr
Economists reacted very slowly to the growing importance of innovation, that started manifesting itself at least since the time of the industrial revolution. It is only after world war II and the phenomenal increase in the expenditures on R&D that took place in most industrialised countries that economists started to study systematically innovation and technical change.
Much progress has achieved in our understanding of innovation and technical change and yet much remains to be done. However, in addition to progress within the study of technical change it is important today to understand how this can fit together with the rest of economics. If technical change needs different hypotheses and assumptions, are these different hypotheses and assumptions applicable uniquely to technical change? In a knowledge-based society in which innovation is becoming the rule rather than the exception, can we still think about most economic phenomena in terms of equilibrium? Or do we need a broader framework capable of explaining the dynamic development and qualitative change induced by innovation?
What is required then is an explicit and bold attempt to apply an evolutionary framework to phenomena other than those that have traditionally occupied scholars of innovation and technical change. It may seem strange to end an introductory page on the technical change research area with an exhortation to go beyond technical change. In fact, what is advocated does not imply an abandonment of technical change: our knowledge of the subject, even if enormously improved in the last forty years, is far from complete. The objective indicated here amounts to denying that the concepts and theories useful for technical change are specialised to it. As true scholars we have to extend the basic principles and hypotheses applicable to technical change to other areas of economics.