INTRODUCTION
The
Technological Innovation is a concept developed within the scientific field of
innovation studies which serves to explain the nature and rate of technological
change. A Technological Innovation can be defined as ‘a dynamic network of
agents interacting in a specific economic/industrial area under a particular
institutional infrastructure and involved in the generation, diffusion, and
utilisation of technology’.
The
approach may be applied to at least three levels of analysis: to a technology
in the sense of a knowledge field, to a product or an artefact, or to a set of
related products and artefacts aimed at satisfying a particular [societal]
function’. With respect to the latter, the approach has especially proven
itself in explaining why and how sustainable (energy) technologies have
developed and diffused into a society, or have failed to do so.
The
concept of a Technological Innovation was introduced as part of a wider
theoretical school, called the innovation approach. The central idea behind
this approach is that determinants of technological change are not (only) to be
found in individual firms or in research institutes, but (also) in a broad
societal structure in which firms, as well as knowledge institutes, are embedded.
Since the 1980s, innovation studies have pointed out the influence of societal
structures on technological change, and indirectly on long-term economic
growth, within nations, sectors or technological fields.
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