Common Innovation: How We Create the Wealth of Nations - Softcover

Swann, G. M.P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1786430827 ISBN 13: 9781786430823

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 2016

Synopsis

In his challenging new book, Common Innovation, Peter Swann argues that innovation and wealth creation are not the monopoly of business but the contribution of ordinary people. Joseph Schumpeter, the pioneer of innovation research, described business innovation as a 'perennial gale of creative destruction', whereas common innovation is, by comparison, a 'gentle and benign breeze'. In common innovation, the ordinary citizen is centre stage, and business is quite peripheral.

Building upon the pioneering work of Eric von Hippel on democratic and user-led innovation, this book goes a step further - offering essential comparisons between business and common innovation, real and material wealth, and oikonomia and the 'outer economy'. Analyses and examples of the destructive side of business innovation accompany Swann's illustration of the 'benign breeze' of common innovation, and a powerful and exciting new role for Leontief models is introduced.

This book will be of great interest to scholars and students seeking a more expansive and insightful understanding of the economics of innovation and wealth.

About this title

About the Author

G.M. Peter Swann, Emeritus Professor of Industrial Economics, Nottingham University Business School, UK

Edition details

• Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1786430827
• ISBN 13: 9781786430823
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272