Learning and Innovation in Organizations and Economies

Bart Nooteboom is Professor of Organization in the Faculty of Management and Organization, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Previous academic positions have included Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Wassenaar, the Netherlands (1998/99); Scientific Director of the Research Institute and Ph.D. School of the faculties of Management and Organization, Economics and Spatial Sciences at Groningen University (1994-1998); and Professor of Industrial Organization at Groningen University. Between 1991 and 1994 he was a member of a committee advising the Minister of Economic Affairs on technology policy. He has also worked for Shell International in both London and The Hague, and for the Research Institute for Small Business in the Netherlands. His current research is on the relation between innovation systems and organizational learning, and attempts to integrate economic issues of innovation with a constructivist perspective from sociology.

In his inspiring and thoughtful book Learning and Innovation in Organisations and Economies, Bart Nooteboom looks at innovation the other way round: He tries to find common logic behind the processes of exploration, of searching for radical innovations and drawing on the economic and technical possibilities that these innovations open up. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is concerned with the fundamental mechanisms driving innovative processes.

• PART I: BUILDING-BLOCKS ; PART II: CONSTRUCTION ; PART III: APPLICATION