Innovationslogik und regionales Wirtschaftswachstum: Theorie und Empirie autopoietischer Innovationsdynamik

Although recent theoretical approaches to economic growth pronounce without exception the crucial role of innovation for economic development, employment and prosperity, and refer in this regard in an widespread and rarely seen harmony to the pioneering works of Joseph A. Schumpeter, it must nonetheless be noticed, that the Schumpterian growth paradigm does still play in economic theory and policy at best a shadowy existence. Contrary to the Schumpeterian ?innovation logic of economic growth? common approaches to economic or regional development can be regarded to be concepts in which there is no particular attention given to creative entrepreneurship. Common growth theories do clearly follow an ?input logic of growth?, by which is meant, that economic growth (in regions) is seen to be the outcome of prior factor accumulation. In the centre of attention is the theoretical and empirical fusion of the Schumpeterian innovation and growth logic with modern systems theory, especially with the autopoiesis concept. Showing that regional innovation systems have an autopoietic, i.e. self-producing und -preserving character and that creative entrepreneurs and their competences are the driving forces in the continuing reproduction process of innovations by innovations, regional development appears to be an endogenous phenomenon, i.e., growth is caused through local actors only and is not dependent on financial help from outside the region. In order to show, that functioning regional innovation systems are subjected to an autopoietic kind of operation, the book tackles among many other the following questions: ·What is the difference between innovation and input logic of growth? ·What is meant by entrepreneurial competence and what kind of role does it play in the innovation process? ·What are the learning processes making up for a ?learning region?? ·What are the (typical) institutional ingredients of growth regions? ·What kind of role does Schumpeterian entrepreneurship play in creating institutions fostering the regional innovation and growth process? ·How do trust relationships leading to stable inter firm cooperation and regional networks evolve? ·In how far has network entrepreneurship hereby to play an important role? ·What is the contribution of financial entrepreneurship to the establishment of autopoietic local finance cycles? ·What are the crucial characteristics of an ?entrepreneurial university?? ·What are the main principles for economic policy making when following the insights of autopoietic systems theory?