Bengt-Åke Lundvall

‘The Learning Economy and the Economics of Hope’ brings together the most important contributions by an expert on policies, management and economics of innovation and knowledge. It offers original insights in processes of innovation and learning and it draws implications for economic theory and public policy. It introduces the reader to important concepts such as innovation systems and the learning economy. It throws a new light on economic development and opens up for a new kind of economics – the economics of hope. It offers a fresh perspective on many of the most important global challenges of today showing how full attention to the characteristics of the learning economy needs to be combined with innovation in global governance. The analysis demonstrates that new technology is developed in an interaction between individuals and organizations and that innovation would not thrive in an economy similar to textbook models of pure markets and perfect competition. It also shows that innovation requires that scientific knowledge is combined with experience based learning and that the performance of innovation systems therefore reflects the combination of research efforts and organizational learning. Growing inequality in income and in access to knowledge and learning is presented as a threat to social cohesion and global well-being. In the concluding part of the book the conceptual framework is used to study how China’s innovation system and policy, Europe’s crisis and underdevelopment in Africa interact is shaping an imbalanced and crisis ridden world system. A new kind of economics, policy learning and new regimes of global governance are presented as elements of hope for the future.

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