Title: Editorial: Going beyond the hard core of innovation. Non-technological and non-economic dimensions of innovation systems

Authors: Steffen Roth, Ralf Wetzel, Karel Muller

Addresses: Centre for Management, Bern University of Applied Sciences, Morgartenstrasse 2a, P.O. Box 305, CH-3000 Bern 22, Switzerland. ' Centre for Management, Bern University of Applied Sciences, Morgartenstrasse 2a, P.O. Box 305, CH-3000 Bern 22, Switzerland. ' Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, U Krize 10, 158 00 Praha 5, Czech Republic

Abstract: Against the background of the current |technology goes economic market| focus of mainstream innovation research, this editorial introduces contributions to a special issue explicitly devoted to the corresponding research gap: non-technological and non-economic innovations are indeed hardly explored; even approaches focusing on non-technological or social innovations still have a strong bias towards the economy. In contrast to both the mainstream and these alternative approaches to innovation, the editorial outlines a concept of socially robust innovations, i.e., innovations that have impact on both economic and non-economic spheres of society, and that can therefore be supposed to be more profitable in terms of, again, both economic and non-economic profit.

Keywords: systems of innovation; non-technological innovation; NTI; social dimensions; robust innovation; non-economic innovation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIRD.2011.038059

International Journal of Innovation and Regional Development, 2011 Vol.3 No.1, pp.1 - 11

Published online: 29 Nov 2014 *

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