Agents intentionality, capabilities and the performance of Systems of Innovation

We are interested on why and how an economic system evolves and, in particular, on the causes of the differences across systems of innovation (SI). SI’s performance differs substantially because there are specific causes at work, apart from the differences in the underlying technologies, institutions, etc. In particular, we refer to the intentionality of the agents interacting within a system for innovation to find out the relationship between agents’ goals, SI’s performance and its policy implications. The underlying thesis in this paper is that agent intentionality is a necessary condition for a substantive explanation of the dynamism of any socio-economic system. The paper departs from an abstract definition of a system as a set of constitutive elements and the connections among them serving a common purpose. And explores how intentionality shapes the structure, evolution and performance of an SI. In this context an evolutionary efficiency criterion is proposed.