Eco-innovation Dynamics - Creative Destruction ad Creative accumulation in green Economic Evolution

The last few years green innovation or ‘eco-innovation’ is increasingly recognized as a main driver and goal of economic development. This represents a marked shift from earlier when the environment generally was considered a burden to business. This paper seeks to contribute to a fundamental evolutionary economic theorizing on the dynamics of the “greening” of the economy, a theme which has been little analyzed so far. The paper suggests that the greening of the economic process should be seen as one of the most innovative changes in recent economic evolution entailing a major structural change of the economic system. The discussion aims more generally to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of techno-economic paradigm shifts. It is argued that green economic evolution represents an interesting case of how selection properties are undergoing change over time, a neglected theme in evolutionary economics. The paper concludes that we may see the emerging ‘ green economy’ as a specific historic era reflecting important changes in competitive conditions characterizing the modern knowledge economy. The paper contributes mainly to a micro-theoretical discussion forwarding a strong paradigmatic explanation of (green) economic evolution. At the micro level, the paper argues, and seeks to exemplify, that eco-innovation dynamics are characterized by both processes of creative destruction and creative accumulation. The paper proposes that it is possible to define a specific green heuristics leading to a fundamental ‘green trajectory’ at the very general R&D level. The impact and pervasiveness of eco-innovation is at this very basic level influencing on the entire economy. The techno-economic paradigm change should be seen as a function of partly changes in the underlying trajectory and partly changes in the selection properties