This book develops new theoretical perspectives on the economics and politics of innovation and knowledge in order to capture new trends in modern capitalism. It shows how giant corporations establish themselves as intellectual monopolies and how each of them builds and controls its own corporate innovation system. It presents an analysis of a new form of production where Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, and their counterparts in China, extract value and appropriate intellectual rents through privileged access to AI algorithms trained by data from organizations and individuals all around the world. These companies’ specific form of production and rent-seeking takes place at the global level and challenges national governments trying to regulate intellectual monopolies and attempting to build stronger national innovation systems. It is within this context that the authors provide new insights on the complex interplay between corporate and national innovation systems by looking at the US-China conflict, understood as a struggle for global technological supremacy. The book ends with alternative scenarios of global governance and advances policy recommendations as well as calls for social activism. This book will be of interest to students, academics and practitioners (both from national states and international organizations) and professionals working on innovation, digital capitalism and related topics.

This book finds that the R&D and technological innovation of a country is not a result, but a factor, of sustained economic growth. Bazhal develops Schumpeter's theory to argue that genuine economic growth - especially in transitioning and developing countries - is only possible with innovation. With a particular focus on the work of Ukrainian economists, Tugan-Batanobvsky and Vernadsky, the text seeks to move the discipline forward and explain why innovation has become a primary factor of economic development in recent decades and why its role will become even more dominant in the future. Chapters interrogate whether modern economic theory can explain how we ensure the effective functioning of the market economy. The book shows that explanations of economists and politicians regarding the nature of the current economic and financial crisis, and the causes of huge gaps in levels of wealth in market economies, demonstrates that there are not enough satisfactory answers to this question.

The important yet contradictory role of innovation in society calls for a philosophy of innovation. Critically exploring innovation in relation to values, the economy and social change, Rafael Ziegler proposes a collaborative theory and practice of innovation that aims to liberate possibilities for our common futures.

How Nations Innovate compares how affluent capitalist economies differ in their patterns of technological innovation. Building on the 'varieties of capitalism' literature, this book goes beyond the traditional focus on 'radical versus incremental innovation' in existing scholarship, and takes the comparison of capitalism to an entirely new set of questions around technological innovation. For example, which type of capitalism engages in job-threatening innovation? Whose innovation widens income inequality? Whose innovation raises productivity? Which type of capitalism has more effective financial markets for innovation? Whose innovators emphasize 'control' rather than 'flexibility' during innovation? By addressing these questions, the author demonstrates that the way nations innovate often has deep, and sometimes counter-intuitive, implications for how they compare in many areas of socio-economic performance. For example, although venture capital is most active in Anglo-Saxon economies, it seems that venture-capital performance in stimulating innovation is also poorest in precisely these countries. On the issue of employment, the author argues that, whilst technological innovation in Anglo-Saxon economies creates jobs, innovation in European economies destroys jobs. Nations also differ in the nature of income inequality driven by innovation. While innovation pushes top earners further ahead of median earners in Anglo-Saxon economies, it drags bottom earners further behind the median in European economies. Finally, varieties of capitalism also differ in their ability to cope with the volatilities of innovation. While Anglo-Saxon economies face a trade-off between low volatility and high innovation output, these two goals seem jointly achievable in European economies.

Innovation in information and communication technology (ICT) fuels the growth of the global economy. How ICT markets evolve depends on politics and policy, and since the 1950s periodic overhauls of ICT policy have transformed competition and innovation. For example, in the 1980s and the 1990s a revolution in communication policy (the introduction of sweeping competition) also transformed the information market. Today, the diffusion of Internet, wireless, and broadband technology, growing modularity in the design of technologies, distributed computing infrastructures, and rapidly changing business models signal another shift. This pathbreaking examination of ICT from a political economy perspective argues that continued rapid innovation and economic growth require new approaches in global governance that will reconcile diverse interests and enable competition to flourish. The authors (two of whom were architects of international ICT policy reforms in the 1990s) discuss this crucial turning point in both theoretical and practical terms.

List of Tables and Figures; List of Acronyms; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Thinking Big Again; Chapter 1: From Crisis Ideology to the Division of Innovative Labour; Chapter 2: Technology, Innovation and Growth; Chapter 3: Risk-Taking State: From 'De-risking' to 'Bring It On!'; Chapter 4: The US Entrepreneurial State; Chapter 5: The State behind the iPhone; Chapter 6: Pushing vs. Nudging the Green Industrial Revolution; Chapter 7: Wind and Solar Power: Government Success Stories and Technology in Crisis; Chapter 8: Risks and Rewards: From Rotten Apples to Symbiotic Ecosystems; Chapter 9: So.

This book develops the theme of my earlier Innovation: The Creative Impulse in Human Progress, and considerably expands the latter book. I came to the study of innovation from experience in industry which had brought me into close practical contact with it, and my initial interest in the subject was in terms of the way in which it expressed human creativity. Progressively, however, my focus shifted towards the laws which help or hinder creativeness in being economically fruitful. This led to the writing of The Political Economy of Innovation and the editing of Direct Protection of Innovation. In the latter work, I had the opportunity of arguing the case for specific new law to complement the Patent system, and of having that case criticised by experts. Just as the first book set economic innovation in a wider context of creativity, the present one sets the law that makes it possible in a wider context of property rights. This is because my study of intellectual property resulted in growing awareness of the incomparable past value and even greater future potential of these rights for innovation and prosperity. My intellectual debt to Douglass North is as great in this later stage as it was to Joseph Schumpeter in the earlier one, and to Christopher Dawson, by whom I had the good fortune to be taught in person, in both.