Aubert reviews from his OECD experience the climate for innovation in the main regions of the world as determined by their characteristic cultures, finding that the Anglo-Saxon countries given the level of their social inequalities have a problem of long term sustainability. Gaudin uses a bio-system metaphor of preparing the soil, planting the seed and removing the weeds, to describe the innovation process and innovation policy. If much of modern society is to be rescued from the economic trap in which it finds itself, innovation policy must emerge from its position as subsidiary to either research policy or economic policy. Many questions are raised by Lamberton about the understanding of the knowledge based economy possessed by economists, policy makers and business executives and about a 'new' economy which is embedded in the 'old' economy. Lundvall and Tomlinson take benchmarking as an example of a widely adopted but unproven technique which is inappropriately being promoted as a public sector management technique not least by the European Commission and elucidate how in spite of its weaknesses it might be used positively as a means of learning.
Innovation is a local phenomenon.
It happens in some places and not in others. The innovating milieu of a territory which cultures innovative dynamism is the outcome of the socio-economic institutions and structure of a territory or locale and Maillat presents a concise description of the milieu and of the challenges which it faces. Learning and absorption from elsewhere has become decisive for innovation. Within this framework lies the need to change radically the concept of a product in order to shift to a mode of production and service which is environmentally sustainable. The competence bloc theory of Eliasson demonstrates that government policy should be less interventionist.