The Human Side of Innovation Systems : Innovation, New Organization Forms and Competence Building in a learning Perspective

The aim of this book is to analyze the relationship between innovation,Englishemployment and competence development within the framework of newlearning organization forms. Knowledge production and innovation areoften seen as linear processes, assuming that scientific results are followed bytechnological invention, production and market introduction. An alternativeapproach, which is chosen in this book, is the interactive and learning approachto innovation. Here, product innovations are considered expressionsof learning processes taking place inside firms and involving different functionalgroups and various decision levels, as well as relations with the firmâ scustomers and subcontractors.A theoretical framework is constructed which combines the system of innovationapproach and the system of employment approach. This frameworkis applied in a dynamic empirical study of enterprises in the private urbansector in Denmark. The empirical study utilizes a unique longitudinal dataset. The data set combines two large surveys and detailed register data on 524Danish firms, and it includes information on the behavior of the firms and allemployees employed in each of the 524 firms for shorter or longer tenures inthe period 1990 to 2000