Chance and Necessity in Industrial Development

The evolutionary model of industrial dynamics is presented in the first section of the paper. In the following two sections results of a simulation study of the model focused on different modes of search for innovation and role of random events in economic development are presented; namely in the second section we investigate the development of industry under different assumptions related to firms' search for innovations (autonomous research, imitation, search for radical innovation, etc.) and in the third section problems of cumulative causation, path-dependence and irreversibility are discussed