The Economics of Knowledge Coordination

The main purpose of this book is to provide a new framework to understand the question of how economic agents and their organizations acquire and coordinate innovative capabilities and new knowledge. Its particular focus is on the dynamics of knowledge production and organization at the firm level.

The volume builds upon theoretical contributions that analyse technological knowledge as a collective good and innovation as being the result of the exploitation of technological complementarities among a variety of actors, and integrates these with insights from complexity theory. The book argues that both networks of innovators, based on interactions and cooperation, and the markets for knowledge and technology, based on transactions, are coordinated by quite visible hands more similar to the Chandlerian vertical hierarchy rather than by the traditionally perceived spontaneous and anonymous coordination of markets. The book provides a theoretical discussion of these issues as well as detailed empirical evidence from a variety of industries.