An intellectual leader in the mould of J.M. Keynes: a tribute to the diverse contributions of Richard R. (Dick) Nelson to economics and to the international business field

Abstract This article discusses how the leading pioneer of modern evolutionary economics, Richard R. (Dick) Nelson attempted a revolution in the way in which Economics is generally done, with some resemblance to the equivalent earlier attempts of Maynard Keynes. While this was unsuccessful within the discipline, Dick’s ideas had a strong impact in various other disciplines, and he was a leader in the creation of the interdisciplinary field of innovation studies. I review four areas of international business (IB) research that have drawn most on Dick Nelson’s work. First, Dick’s early conceptual writings on the evolutionary theory of the firm became a landmark contribution to the then nascent field of business strategy, and the evolutionary approach to the multinational corporation (MNC). Second, Dick’s development of the concept of national innovation systems is now widely used in IB. Third, Dick’s various contributions on the unevenness of technological innovation across firms or industries have influenced work in IB on knowledge spillovers between MNCs and other firms, and on patterns of international inter-organizational alliances or networks. Fourth, the impact on IB of Dick’s many writings on university-industry or science-technology relationships, and on intellectual property rights regimes have been especially relevant for IB research on comparative institutional structures, and for the interpretation of internalization theory in IB. In conclusion I argue that the return of systemic analysis in the IB field has now created new opportunities for the further exchange of ideas between IB and evolutionary economics conducted in the fashion exemplified by Dick Nelson.