Economics of Innovation 1 (Vorlesung)

Module No: 5209-411

Room: HS 33

Time: Monday 10-12 o´clock

Short description: ‘Innovation Economics I’ will introduce the master students into the broad field of modern innovation economics. Innovation economics has gained momentum since the 1990s as an autonomous field in economics qualified by the increasing importance of knowledge and innovation for the competitiveness of firms, regions and economies as well as by the peculiarities of innovations which makes innovation processes difficult to be analyzed in the context of standard industrial economics. It turned out that modern innovation economics has become a field of interdisciplinary research combining besides economists, among others technological historians, economic sociologist, engineers and complexity researchers. In this course students will be made acquainted to the most important concepts, schools, problems and methodologies in the analysis of innovation processes.

Contents:

I. Introduction

1. Why studying innovation economics?
2. A brief overview on modern innovation economics
3. Economic growth and innovation in economics

II. The basic concepts and approaches in innovation economics

4. The basic concepts
    4.1. The epistemological caveat
    4.2. Models of Innovation
           4.2.1 The linear model of innovation
           4.2.2 The network model of innovation
    4.3. Forms of Innovation
    4.4. The object of innovation activities
           4.4.1 Innovation: Artifacts and processes
           4.4.2 Features of knowledge emphasized by the Neoclassical Approach
           4.4.3 Innovation processes: a typical example for market failure
           4.4.4 Mechanisms for appropriability: intellectual property rights
           4.4.5 The detailed treatment of knowledge in Neo-Schumpeterian economics
           4.4.6 Consequences from the detailed view: the experimental economy
           4.5. The subject of innovation activities
           4.5.1 Two concepts of rationality
           4.5.2 Two concepts of entrepreneurship

5.  The different approaches in innovation economics
     5.1. The allocation-theoretic perspective of neoclassical innovation economics
     5.2. The neo-Schumpeterian (or evolutionary) approach to innovation economics

III. Modeling innovation processes

  6.  Innovation, market structures and technological alliances
  7.  Collaboration and innovation networks

IV. Measuring innovation

V. Innovation Policy

Literature

Due to the strong research orientation of this course the major literature are recent scientific publications which will be made available to the students during the lectures. A reading list will be distributed which will be worked through in the exercises to this course.