Cybernetics, and (real) national innovation systems

The notion of national innovation systems has come into prominence as a way of illuminating the processes, institutions and actors responsible for industrial innovation and economic growth at the country level. There is a tendency among policy makers and analysts, however, to regard the notion as an overly precise tool with which to achieve national prosperity rather than an attempt to more fully understand the institutional and human dynamics which give rise to innovation. We employ second-order cybernetics to counter this tendency. Using new information, some contained in taxation statistics and some contained in an industrial demographics database under development, we demonstrate that innovation is much more widespread and involves many more people than commonly thought. Contemporary pictures of sparsely occurring innovations are shown to be misleading-at least in the case of Canada. This finding invites a rethinking of innovation policies. A new epistemology is needed to account for the ubiquity of the innovation phenomenon and to include actors and factors not usually ascribed to national innovation systems. We suggest, for example, that technologists and technicians often figure prominently in the creation of specific innovations but seldom get any credit for their role. We also point to other, less tangible, factors, such as trust, which surely enter the picture, but are seldom counted as influences that can encourage or stifle industrial innovation