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This chapter explores the knowledge cost function, the study of which makes possible important progress in grasping the determinants of the large variance in the cost of innovation across firms. The amount of external knowledge and internal stocks of knowledge that firms can access and use in the generation of new technological knowledge helps firms reduce the costs of innovation. The empirical section is based upon companies listed on the financial markets in the UK, Germany, France and Italy for the period 1995–2006 for which information about patents have been gathered. The econometric analysis of the costs of innovation knowledge considers the unit costs of patents alongside R & D expenditure and the stock of internal and external knowledge for each firm. The results confirm that the stock of internal knowledge and access to external knowledge play key roles in assessing the actual capability of each firm to generate new technological knowledge.

This chapter shows how and why the use of external knowledge is necessary to complement the recombinant generation of new knowledge. When access to external knowledge occurs at costs below the social value of knowledge, firms benefit from pecuniary knowledge externalities and are actually able to introduce productivity-enhancing innovations. The empirical evidence on 20 OECD countries confirms that the growth of total factor productivity is negatively associated with the costs of knowledge. Total factor productivity thus increases faster where and when the costs of knowledge are lower.

This chapter elaborates an agent-based simulation model (ABM) to explore the endogenous long-term dynamics of knowledge externalities. ABMs, as a form of artificial cliometrics, allow analysis of the effects of the reactivity of firms caught in out-of-equilibrium conditions, combined with endogenous knowledge externalities stemming from the levels of knowledge connectivity of the system. The simulation results show the working of endogenous knowledge externalities as well as their powerful effects. At the micro-level, the reactions of firms caught in out-of-equilibrium conditions yield successful effects in the form of productivity-enhancing innovations only in the presence of high levels of knowledge connectivity and strong pecuniary knowledge externalities. At the meso-level, the introduction of innovations changes the structural characteristics of the system in terms of knowledge connectivity that affect the availability of knowledge externalities. Endogenous centrifugal and centripetal forces continually reshape the structure of the system and its knowledge connectivity. At the macro-system level, an out-of-equilibrium process leads to a step-wise increase in productivity combined with non-linear patterns of output growth characterized by significant oscillations typical of the long waves in Schumpeterian business cycles.

This chapter implements the notion of s recombinant knowledge generation function, and explores the role of internal and external knowledge in the generation of new technological knowledge. It enables us to appreciate: i) the complementary as opposed to supplementary role of external knowledge; and ii) the role of the size and composition of the internal stock of knowledge. The empirical section is based on a panel of companies listed on the main European financial markets for the period 1995–2006. The econometric analysis is based on simultaneous equations. The results confirm that R & D efforts and external knowledge are indispensable to the generation of new technological knowledge.

This chapter elaborates the notion of innovation as the outcome of creative responses made possible by the quality of knowledge externalities available in the system. As such the introduction of innovations can be analysed as an emerging property of complex system dynamics. The chapter presents an agent-based simulation model (ABM) of an economy where systemic knowledge interactions among heterogeneous agents are crucial for the recombinant generation of new technological knowledge and the introduction of innovations. In this approach the system’s organization plays a crucial role in assessing the chances of individual firms actually introducing innovations because it qualifies access to external knowledge, an indispensable input, together with internal learning and research, in the generation of new knowledge. The introduction of innovations is analysed as the result of systemic knowledge interactions among myopic agents credited with an extended procedural rationality that includes forms of creative reaction. The agents’ creative reaction may lead to the introduction of productivity enhancing innovations. This takes place only when the structural, organizational and institutional characteristics of the system are such that agents, reacting to out-of-equilibrium conditions, can actually take advantage of external knowledge available within the innovation system in which they are embedded to generate new technological knowledge. The ABM enables us to explore the effects of alternative organizational features, namely different configurations of intellectual property rights regimes and architectural configurations of regional structures in which knowledge interactions take place, on rates of technological innovation. The results suggest that the dissemination of knowledge favours the emergence of creative reactions, and hence faster introduction of technological innovations.