The Dynamics of Technological Knowledge : From Linearity to Recombination

The paper proposes an original survey on the evolution of the concept of technological knowledge and of its production, as well as of its operational translations in the empirical literature. We move from the former notion of knowledge capital stock, implying a linear approach to the process of knowledge generation, and then we go through the knowledge production function and the recombinant knowledge approach, which are related respectively to a systemic and to an exogenous complexity view on knowledge creation. It is argued that the most recent empirical and theoretical approaches to technological knowledge are well suited to elaborate a framework in which knowledge is the outcome of endogenous complex dynamics, involving qualified interaction among innovating agents that are likely to shape the architecture of knowledge structure as well as to be influenced by it. We show some of the empirical methodologies fitting into this landscape and propose some prolific avenues of research