Rethinking the innovation system framework

Abstract This paper revisits and extends the innovation system (IS) framework in light of current technological, socio-economic and ecological transformations. Building on fundamental national and regional IS concepts, it argues that contemporary dynamics such as digitalisation and artificial intelligence, new modes of knowledge production, twin transitions, globalisation, sustainability and eco-innovation, agency and cultural change challenge growth- and competitiveness-oriented understandings of innovation. The paper proposes an expanded, transformation-oriented IS concept that (1) treats digitalisation and AI as basic socio-digital drivers, (2) conceptualises innovation systems explicitly as knowledge and learning systems, (3) incorporates multi-regime couplings and translocal scales, (4) broadens the normative scope towards sustainability and resilience, (5) understands policy and standards-setting as endogenous levers of system change (6) foregrounds agency, intermediaries and new actor roles, and (7) embeds path dependence and path creation as key dynamic dimensions. The resulting framework conceives innovation systems as socio-digital, ecologically embedded arenas for negotiating and steering transformative development, providing guidance for empirical analysis and mission-oriented policy design.