Capabilities, freedoms and innovation: exploring connections

The following review aims to explore some of the connections between the capabilities approach and innovation economics to discover affinities and possible integrations. We begin the paper by presenting a brief overview of the two lines of enquiry: the relationship between innovation and growth and Sen's contribution to the capabilities approach and human development. Then, we start exploring the various interconnections between human development and innovation. This paper shows that these two lines of economic analysis and practice, which follow very different intellectual and practical paths, have many interesting connections in the common ground of economic development. The core conclusion of this review is that the capabilities approach and the human development theory can provide a normative framework for the development of the social and institutional context in which innovation systems (ISs) develop and that ISs approach can offer a strategy for growth which is conducive to the expansion of capabilities.