Introduction

In these short notes it is certainly impossible to provide any fair assessment of the wealth of research which has gone over the last decade into the analysis of national systems of innovation (and, relatedly, national systems of production). Hence, in the following, I will limit myself to some rather telegraphic remarks and propositions concerning, first, the empirical background of such studies; second, the relations among (partly different) interpretative perspectives on the subject; and, third, their implications also for other domains of economic analysis – including the theory of the firm and growth theory. Finally, I shall briefly hint at some policy implications, especially with reference to the European case. In doing all that I will raise more questions than provide answers: however, a few of the propositions that follow are empirically testable, and thus may provide some inspiration for further research in the area.

Persistent asymmetries across firms and countries

The general historical background of the discussion of ‘national systems’, as I see it, is the observation of non-random distributions across countries of:

1. corporate capabilities;

2. organisational forms;

3. strategies; and ultimately

4. revealed performances, in terms of production efficiency and inputs productivities, rates of innovation (however measured), rates of adoption/diffusion of innovation themselves, dynamics of market shares on the world markets, growth of income and employment.

Note that the patterns defined by the latter indicators, when measured at the level of sectors and countries, tend to display relatively high degrees of persistence over time, despite a somewhat higher inter-company variability.