This chapter addresses global issues regarded through the focusing device of ‘the learning economy’. The form is brief and essayistic. The chapter begins with reflections on the basic concepts and their roots. With reference to the three chapters on Europe, China and Africa (chapter 10, 11 and 12), it is shown that while problems and opportunities are context specific, they often originate from developments in another region. On this basis, the essay points to the need for new forms of global governance that can promote learning worldwide. It ends with some ideas for a research agenda.

The Economics of Hope

The economics of hope alludes to a book with this title bringing together articles written by Christopher Freeman (1992). The essays cover topics related to science policy, innovation and competitiveness linking science and technology to broader social and environmental issues. They are critical to the dominant paradigm in economics and to public policy, but they combine criticism with constructive ideas about where to go. Freeman was critical of how modern capitalism produced inequality and exploited natural resources. He was, however, equally critical of dystopian perspectives where current negative trends were projected into the future and ending in catastrophic scenarios.

The perspective presented in this book is somewhat different. Freeman's starting point was science and science policy, and his most important reference was to the Marxist physicist J. D. Bernal who established analytical links between science and society. Both Freeman and Bernal built their conditional optimism on the assumption that science and technology has a lot to offer in terms of solutions to the world's problems, if the institutional setting allowed it to serve society. In this book the starting point is the learning economy, where human interaction and learning at different levels spanning from the organizations, the regions and the nations shape what is happening in the world. Freeman's conditional optimism was based on the potential that science-based learning could offer, while this book broadens the perspective and gives more attention to the potential of experience-based learning.

The Learning Economy

The learning economy concept has three dimensions – it is normative as well as descriptive and analytical. First, the concept describes characteristics of the current economy where the capacity and the opportunity to learn are crucial for economic performance.