How the Social Economy Produces Innovation

Abstract

Social economics has long been concerned with the effects on human societies of market-coordinated processes of economic innovation. But the social economy also causes invention and innovation, an aspect that has received less attention. This article reviews three new approaches to the study of the growth of knowledge in economic systems as driven expressly by sociocultural mechanisms and dynamics. The first are so-called “social network markets” and “novelty bundling markets”. The second extends from “knowledge commons” to “innovation commons”. The third is a sociocultural semiotic process of group dynamics. These models represent different ways the social economy generates newness and produces innovation.