Introduction

This book is an attempt to present a somewhat novel theory of innovation systems in the concrete context of the experience of growth and crisis in the East Asian economies. The historical focus, for reasons given below, is on the last few decades prior to the financial crisis. However the impact of the crisis is also analyzed in a separate chapter which underlines the need for combining corporate and international finance with economic theories of technical change in order to explain the technological trajectories in complex financial economies more completely. The overall framework is intended to be an evolutionary one. In this sense the work belongs to the growing tradition described by Dosi (2000) in the introductory essay to his collected scientific papers. There he credits pioneers such as Abramovitz, Nelson and Winter, and Freeman among others. This book also begins with and acknowledges the contributions of these authors. It builds on these seminal contributions, and tries to take seriously the idea of technology systems which is akin to Dosi’s concept of technological paradigms.