Knowledge resources and markets: What territorial economic systems ?

In their attempt to explain in ever more in-depth manner learning processes at the roots of economic change, territorial innovation models (TIMs) have remained centred on production. Consumption is mainly regarded as the expression of an abstract demand relayed by exogenous market mechanisms. Building on a socio-institutional approach of market, the article conceptualises an ‘economic system’ in which knowledge is analysed as a resource constructed and valued through the market co-evolution of a production and a consumption system. Drawing upon various case studies, four particular economic systems are depicted and contrasted with regard to different territorial knowledge dynamics (TKDs).