A Territorial Socio-ecological Approach to Innovation Diffusion, Schumpeterian Competition and Dynamic Choice

In this chapter we attempt to elaborate, on the basis of a territorial socio-ecological approach, a unifying conceptual framework of the innovation diffusion process and the effects of socio-cultural and economic interventions of an active environment on innovation spread. The essence of this approach is that we assume there exists a synergetic interaction between the fundamental socio-economic structural hierarchy of the territorial/regional units and clusters of competitive innovations entering the territorial/functional niches.