Basic Idea
Routines, interactions, and institutions are intrinsically interwoven, collectively shaping innovation dynamics and economic change. Rules, created and carried by heterogeneous actors – individuals and organizations – provide the structural framework within which the system evolves (Dopfer & Potts, 2008). Actors such as companies or universities use routines, i.e. rule-based patterns, guiding their behaviour in a systematic, repetitive and recognizable way (Nelson & Winter, 1982). Routines can be a stabilizing factor (Nelson & Winter, 1982) but also a source of conflicts between individuals or organizations in an ever changing environment (Pentland & Feldman, 2005). Routines, including consumption patterns, often already determine the direction of technological and scientific change before individuals and organizations move into cooperation or competition (Di Stefano et al., 2012). These modes of interaction are also fundamental to economic change, influencing the diversity of actors by either decreasing or increasing their heterogeneity (Cantner, 2016). As innovation ecosystems vary, they require distinct dynamic strategies that effectively balance cooperation and competition (Hannah & Eisenhardt, 2018). Institutions, in turn, provide formal (e.g. laws) and informal rules (e.g. codes of conduct) for innovative ecosystems (Lundvall, 2016) and simultaneously serve as frameworks that facilitate, and are shaped by, interactions among heterogeneous agents of change. Within this context, policy measures function as strategic routines that alter selection environments, generate variation, and reconfigure institutions to provide directionality (Nelson & Winter, 1982; Karo & Kattel, 2018).
Time Schedule and Review Process
- Call for Papers opening October 17, 2025
- Submissions to the Special Issue until September 30, 2026, the latest
- Continuous reviewing, decision and publication process, i.e. publication shortly after acceptance
Editors: Herbert Dawid, Rita Strohmaier, Claudia Werker
Further information is available here.