Systems of Innovation Perspectives and Challenges

The national system of innovation approach has attracted both academics and policy makers. There has been different emphasis laid by those who both originated the concept and developed it further for policy learning applications. From the firm level to the global innovation networks, the varieties and differences in system of innovation functions, activities and factors continue to attract debate amongst the leading scholars. The main challenge is to translate the system of innovation from a conceptual framework to theory that feeds a concrete practice. By assessing closely the existing work on systems of innovation and by going beyond the current literature, I have formulated the functions, constituents, activities, factors and boundaries that the system of innovation provides for better policy formulation and application in practice.