Innovation Ecosystems Increasing Competitiveness

Martin Fransman presents a new approach to understanding how innovation happens, who makes it happen, and the helps and hindrances. Looking at innovation in real-time under uncertainty, he develops the idea of an 'innovation ecosystem', i.e. a system of interrelated players and processes that jointly make innovation happen. Examples include: how companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, AT&T, and Huawei interact in the ICT Ecosystem; four innovations that changed the world - the transistor, microprocessor, optical fibre, and the laser; the causes of the telecoms boom and bust of the early 1990s that influenced the Great Recession from 2007; and the usefulness of the idea of innovation ecosystems for Chinese policy makers. By delving into the complex determinants of innovation this book provides a deeper, more rigorous understanding of how it happens. It will appeal to economists, social scientists, business people, policy makers, and anyone interested in innovation and entrepreneurship.

1. Introduction; 2. Contextualising innovation – the Schumpeterian-evolutionary approach to economic change; 3. 'National innovation systems', 'business ecosystems', and 'innovation ecosystems'; 4. The ICT innovation ecosystem; 5. Interview with Martin Fransman on innovation ecosystems; 6. How does innovation happen? – An ex ante perspective; 7. Who makes innovation happen? Is the entrepreneur becoming obsolete? Creating an organisation-level innovation ecosystem; 8. Innovation ecosystems and financial markets – the telecoms boom and bust 1996–2003; 9. Innovation ecosystems, new waves of industrialisation, and the implications for China; 10. Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, Money, and Innovation; 11. Conclusions.

Fransman explains how innovation happens and which factors can help or hinder, by treating innovation as a systemic phenomenon, or ecosystem of players and processes. It will appeal to economists, other social scientists, business people, policy makers, and anyone interested in innovation and entrepreneurship.

Martin Fransman is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Edinburgh. He won the 2008–10 Joseph Schumpeter Prize for his book The New ICT Ecosystem (Cambridge, 2010). His other book prizes include the Wadsworth Prize for the best business book published in the UK for Telecoms in the Internet Age: From Boom to Bust to…? (2002), and the Masayoshi Ohira Prize for The Market and Beyond (Cambridge, 1990).