Innovation and Regulation in the Digital Age : a Call for New Perspectives

For more than three decades, the ICT sector has been the scene of some of the most spectacular innovations, both in terms of their industrial and economic effects and their societal impact. Investments have flowed into the sector in massive volumes, particularly in mobile telecommunications networks; products and services have penetrated at an unprecedented rate; and the sector has experienced comprehensive reorganizations, particularly through the influence of new entrants. This paper intends to explore these areas of tension between innovation and regulation. It hypothesizes that the current forms of innovation and their related strategies are helping to radically redefine the traditional configurations of the very firms and markets on which the principles and practices of regulations are based. We support the view that observable tensions call for new forms of regulation, based more directly on analysis of the productive resources and structuring of the value chains in innovation systems for digital products and services.n.a