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Innovation and lock-in

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posted on 2023-06-09, 14:18 authored by Uwe Cantner, Simone Vannuccini
The concept of lock-in can certainly be listed among those weighing most heavily in the conceptual toolbox used by scholars of innovation and evolutionary economics. Processes of competitive diffusion, or choice between alternatives of ‘unknown merit’, are known to generate lock-in, that is, inflexible outcomes, and this finding has critical implication for the study of economic dynamics and history-dependent processes. In this chapter, we first summarize what is known in the economic literature about the nature of lock-in, and we discuss if lock-ins are really inescapable, especially when innovation is concerned. Second, we employ the replicator dynamics model, suggesting a parallel between monopolization and lock-in, and show that the convergence of a system to the dominance of a single alternative does not have to be inescapable; rather, it is strongly dependent on the regime and parameters characterizing the competition between alternatives. In particular, the interaction of positive reinforcements driving market selection and negative reinforcements occurring at the level of each individual alternative generates outcomes far from the lock-in into one uncontestable alternative.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

The Elgar Companion to Innovation and Knowledge Creation

Publisher

Edward Elgar Publishing

Page range

165-181

Book title

The Elgar companion to innovation and knowledge creation

ISBN

9781782548522

Series

Economics 2017

Department affiliated with

  • SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Sebastian Henn, Harald Bathelt, Laurent Simon, Patrick Cohendet

Legacy Posted Date

2018-07-31

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