Analysis of technological innovation from business economics and management

This paper identifies and analyses the main contributions to the analysis of firms' innovative activities of five approaches related to business economics and management: industrial organization, transaction costs economy, positive agency theory, resource-based view and evolutionary theory. Complementarity can be noted among these approaches. They can all be applied for analysing a specific aspect of innovative activity. However, the contributions of evolutionary theory seem to comprise the most comprehensive approach for studying the firm's innovative process from an internal point of view and dealing with its complex characteristics. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.