Innovation in the Service Economy: the New Wealth of Nations

International audienceContemporary economies are often described as innovation economies. They are also definitely service economies as far as services are their main sources of wealth and employment. Paradoxically there is still considerable unwillingness to consider them as economies of innovation in services, as if the two main characteristics of modern societies (service and innovation) could coexist while ignoring each other. This paradox is rooted in an obsolete conception of economy which relegates services to the periphery and considers manufacturing as being the only engine of growth. The aim of this book is to try and reconcile these two basic characteristics of contemporary economies. It propounds a relatively simple theoretical framework which allows both to account for innovation specifities in services and to enrich our understanding of industrial innovation itself. This theoretical model is fed by numerous empirical investigations carried out in different countries and and in various service sectors. This book is likely to interest reasearchers conscious of the decreasing return of theoretical apparatus inherited from an agricultural and manufacturing past, but also managers and public authorities, faced with the necessity to design strategies and policies able to benefit from challenges by the new economy of services and innovation