Law, Development and Innovation

This introduction presents preliminary reflections on the triangular relationship among law, development and innovation, as well as on how each chapter addresses it. The starting point is that the nexus between law and development can be usefully explored by focussing on innovation dynamics. Being one of the main drivers of development, innovation is a good candidate for an analysis that tries to understand the real impact of the institutional environment. While several different approaches are possible, we suggest that, first, there is no automatic sequence or hierarchical relationship between law, innovation and development; second, that development is directly dependent on the coordination of the two parallel dynamics of technological and legal change. We argue that the lack of such coordination is one of the main reasons why both innovation policies and institutional reforms fail to foster development. After describing the way each chapter deals with the triangular relationship, the Introduction highlights three general suggestions that could be of interest to academic scholars, policymakers and practitioners involved in the law and development field.