The conference has been organised along two main themes:

1. Innovation and economic development.
2. Knowledge, competition and organization

Recent developments in economics have gone from the recognition of the importance of innovation (early studies of innovation, exogenous growth models) to the exploration of innovation mechanisms (more refined microeconomic and sectoral studies of innovation) to the incorporation into economic models of the results of the previous research (endogenous growth, evolutionary models). An important lesson to be drawn from all this research is that a purely macro-based analysis of growth is not enough. The various mechanisms of innovation creation and diffusion, the importance of agent heterogeneity, of market selection processes, of the internal organisation of the firm and of organisational routines, the obsolescence and the consequent emergence of new types of capital goods are just few examples of micro-economic phenomena that contribute decisively to macro-economic development.

The ISS 2006 conference aims at favouring dialogue amongst open minded researchers sharing a common interest in innovation and in the work of Schumpeter. The following subjects provide examples of topics about which the dialogue could be especially fruitful. The growing importance of knowledge and of human capital, accounting, increasing returns and path dependence, the role of variety in economic growth, the role of time and importance of business history, the co-evolution of technology and institutions, the economics of agglomeration are just some examples of subjects about which important questions to deal with innovation have already been raised but renewed answers are still missing.