Olivier Weinstein

New modes of innovation: How services benefit industry

Despite the significance of services in the economic statistics, economic theories of innovation have tended to ignore them, or to assume that innovation in services consists of little more than adopting innovations developed in industry. This view is subjected to a critique based on three questions: (1) why is innovation in services misunderstood or neglected in economic theory? (2) what do field observations indicate are the principal forms of innovation in services? (3) how can these observations help to broaden and enrich the economic theory of industrial innovation?

Organizations, firms and institutions in the generation of innovation

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to develop the innovation system analysis by bringing together the “institutional” and “organizational” dimensions of the process of innovation at the firm level. The objective is to start elaborating a “systemic” theory of innovation in firms. The paper summons up the contributions and limits of “organizational” and “institutional” approaches to innovation. This preliminary investigation leads to a series of relevant questions. In a second section, an attempt is made to overcome the dichotomy and make progress towards a more exhaustive and better-articulated representation of the innovation process considered at the firm level.