Creative Globalization

1Globalization and Innovation: An Intellectual Landscape

Theories of globalization emerged in the mid-1980s. They combine risk in three different ways: as a “godsend”, as a ubiquitous probability of a disaster or even as an injustice repeatedly affecting the most vulnerable. The diversification of the innovation system also took place in many ways. Literature on innovation systems includes a large share of comparatist processes: for example, opposition between the Japanese and American approaches to innovation. Globalization theories bring about a methodological break: the approach is global and no longer comparative between the different national innovation systems. Three theoretical families can be distinguished: the first will seek to concentrate the innovation system in companies, rather than industrial policies, i.e. more or less updated variants of Colbertism. A second family has no organizational dimension; what matters are the consumers and public policies. This family proposes political action. The third family is that of “change in change”, which means that globalization modifies the innovation system. In “supply” approaches of innovation systems, the risk is reduced in the form of a godsend. In “political action” approaches, the collateral damage of globalization is insisted on. In the “system” approach, a catastrophic risk is introduced. The three families also vary through the levels and scales of collective action: the first “offer” family seeks to reinforce small ...