Introduction, Overview and Reprise

Modern studies of the relations between science, technology and innovation have frequently observed that the practical application of new ideas to the economy more often than not leads a theoretical understanding. So it has turned out in the study of the modern service economy. Long after services acquired economic and social significance, social scientists began tentatively to map this phenomenon and analyse its foundations. Despite the suggestions of Fisher (1933) and Clark (1957) it was not until the 1960s that scholars such as Fuchs (1965) began to chart the long-run growth of service employment in the USA, and to speculate on how this reflected particular interactions between productivity and growth and the evolution of the pattern of demand. Many scholars followed and we now have an increasing understanding of the role of services in the development of the division of labour in modern economie1. Even more significant for our purposes is the length of time it has taken to recognise the importance of services as loci of innovation in two senses. Firstly, service firms can be innovative in their own right, even though the process of innovation and the kinds of innovation may be different from those traditionally associated with manufacturing and other primary activities. Secondly, service firms and associated activities play an important role in the evolving division of creative labour which is constituted by modern innovation systems. It is to the elaboration and understanding of these two themes that this volume of essays is devoted.