Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Part 1 Systems of innovation - overview and basic concepts: institutions and organizations in systems of innovation, Charles Edquist and Bjorn Johnson; generation and distribution of knowledge - incentive structures, norms and institutions, Dominique Foray; economic infrastructures and innovation systems, Keith Smith; interindustry differences in technical change and national patterns of technological accumulation, Paolo Guerrieri and Andrew Tylecote; sectorial innovation systems - technological regimes, Schumpeterian dynamics and spatial boundaries, Stefano Breschi and Franco Malerba; the national imagination and systems of innovation, Mark Elam. Part 2 Innovation systems - evolutionary perspectives: innovation systems and evolutionary theories, Paolo Saviotti; delineating evolutionary systems of innovation, Maureen McKelvey; learning technical change and public policy - how to create and exploit diversity, Patrick Cohendet and Patrick Llerena; national innovation systems and the dynamics of division of labour, Esben Sloth Andersen and Bengt-Ake Lundvall; diversity creation in technological systems - a technology policy perspective, Bo Carlsson and Staffan Jacobsson. Part 3 Systems transformation - technological and institutional change: science-based technologies and interdisciplinarity - future challenges and institutional consequences, Freider Meyer-Krahmer; technological discontinuities and incumbents' performance - from the firm's perspective, Ellinor Ehrnberg and Staffan Jacobsson; components of and shifts in national innovation systems, Ricardo Galli and Morris Teubal; systems of innovation in transformation - from socialism to post-socialism, Slavo Radosevic; the building of supra-national institutions in Europe - the emergence of a European system of innovation, Parascevas Carcostas and Luc Soete.

This text, the result of work within an international inter-disciplinary network with the task of building a sophisticated conceptual foundation for the continued study of innovations in a systemic context, relates the systems of innovation approach to innovation theory.