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ABSTRACT
This discussion paper offers a reflection on the importance of studying innovation, using illustrative examples from 16th century Spanish history. Comparing the innovation policies of two successive rulers of the ancient city of Granada the paper makes the case that well-functioning innovation systems can be gradually developed, but also rapidly destroyed, through different public policies. The main argument is that it is possible to oppose the devastation of successful innovation systems by conducting and diffusing good social research that points to principles upon which such systems are based.
Keywords: innovation systems, public policy, social development
Without science and technology, the life of man
would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
Keith Pavitt
For a long time, I thought that there must be plenty of topics that are both more important and more enjoyable to study than innovation. I have come to believe that there are certainly topics that are more enjoyable, but few that are more important. This change of heart did not occur all of a sudden, but came sneaking up on me gradually. Sure enough, academic books and lectures have taught me that innovation -the creation of higher quality, lower cost products and services - is crucial for the long-term economic growth and welfare of a society; that it does not accrue in equal amounts in all parts of the world; that specific combinations of public policies and social structure offer distinct possibilities for innovation and so on. Yet, these theories never set off an eureka moment of the sort that clears the fog in front of the researcher's eyes and makes it evident why some obscure problem is worth years of arduous study. Rather, I think my conviction emerged from glimpses of resemblance between observations I made at the University when I was trying hard to think about innovation and some I made in my leisure time when I was trying very hard not to. One such glimpse I got while holidaying in the ancient Spanish city of Granada in the summer of 2003. At the time, I was spending lazy hours leafing through Amin Malouf s (1993) Leo the African and Washington Irving's (1832) Tales of the Alhambra. The books told the following story: After the fall of...