Innovation Management and the Law: An Institutional Approach

In economic theory and in management studies, innovation is widely regarded as the motor of economic activities and as being the primary source of renewal in the economic system. This view emphasizes how innovation work is organized in specialized teams inside the firm, or, alternatively, located to start-ups and similar small ventures that are strongly incentivized to innovate to survive. Rather than assuming that innovation work is a mere product of incentives provided by the market system, propelled by the individual and collective skills of the innovation team participants and the resources that they mobilize in their work, this volume examines how a market for innovation ideas is being constructed on the basis of policy making and legislative activities. Innovation Management and the Law examines how the idea of value creation is understood to be a matter of innovation activities and how such innovation activities are premised on legal rights that create not only incentives, corporations, and markets, but also more widely signal to market actors what kind of activities are consistent with policy makers’ economic and social welfare objectives. The volume thus adds to the innovation management literature by introducing a comprehensive analysis of the patent system, illustrating that the patent system is itself an institution and that it should be examined in such terms when studying how innovations are generated on the basis of team production activities and legal rights that are enforceable. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, professionals, and advanced students in the fields of management, economic theory, and law.

Alexander Styhre is Chair of management and organization in the Department of Business Administration of the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.