Gli approcci biologici nell’economia dell’innovazione
 [Biological Approaches within the Economics of Innovation]

Mario Coccia
 

Abstract The innovation is a main variable of the economic growth, but the origin and diffusion of innovations are functions of several variables. For this reason, the contributions of other disciplines have been used to understand in depth its behaviour and spatial-temporal dynamic. The aim of this paper is to investigate as the biological approaches have affected the economic thought and the development of the economics of innovation.  This research shows as, since 1957 the patterns of technological diffusion are originated from researches on allometric growth and epidemiology carried out, from 1920 to 1945, by Huxley, Reeve and other biologists of the Oxford research institute of zoology. This paper also focuses the historical aspects of the evolutionary theory of economic change, developed by Nelson and Winter in 1970s which drew one’s inspiration from natural selection of Darwin’s theory (1859). Although these arguments are still a matter of intense controversy within the history of the economic thought, the relation between economics and biology has played a fundamental role to analyse some complex economical phenomena and for establishing the knowledge basis of a new theory of technological and economic change.

Keywords:  Innovation, Biology, Economics, Evolutionary theory, Diffusion, Firm, Allometry

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