Negotiating Order: Sectoral Policies and Social Learning in Ontario

Innovation and learning are closely linked in the literature on technological change and the global economy. From the perspective of both evolutionary economics and regional studies, the capacity to innovate in turn is linked to the ability to harness successfully new knowledge in the pursuit of commercial applications or fashion significant improvements in product and process technologies. This trend has led many observers to describe the industrial countries as knowledge-based economies, however, it may be more appropriate to describe them as a learning economy. As the rapid pace of change assowith the ‘frontiers’ of economically relevant knowledge accelerates, the economic value of individual pieces of knowledge diminishes the more widely accessible they become. The increased availability of information resulting from the rapid diffusion of new information technologies and the emphasis on learning are thus linked. Learning in this respect refers to the building of new competencies and the acquisition of new skills, not just the acquisition of information (Lundvall and Borras, 1998, p. 35).