What knowledge does the bioeconomy build upon?

Abstract

Modern economies have long been characterised as ‘knowledge-based economies’ (e.g. David & Foray, 2002), whereby more advanced economies are distinguished by their ability to generate, disseminate and use new scientific and technological knowledge. Going forward, however, the ability of all our economies to successfully address society’s daunting grand-challenges is recognised as something which is not solely about how to increase innovation in firms, universities and research institutes; it is increasingly seen as being related to improving the efficiency of innovation systems when leveraging existing investments from different parts of the economy (Bessant & Venables, 2010).