Doing institutional analysis: implications for the study of innovations

The study of institutions and innovativeness is presently high on the agenda of the social sciences. There is increasing concern with how a society's innovativeness is associated with its international competitiveness. And as scholars study why the innovative styles of societies vary there has been increasing concern with how the institutional makeup of a society influences its particular style of innovativeness. However, before there can be significant advance in the study of this problem, it is important that we have a better understanding of what constitutes institutional analysis. Every social science discipline – with the exception of psychology – has at least one distinctive strategy for doing institutional analysis. And it is because of the lack of consensus as to the appropriate boundaries and content of institutional analysis that we have limited ability to make theoretical advances in understanding how the institutional makeup of a society impacts on its innovativeness. Recognizing that this is a serious problem for the social sciences, this article attempts to structure the field of institutional analysis and takes the first steps in relating it to the study of a society's style of innovativeness.