Conclusion

The economic dislocation associated with the transition to the new economy brings in its path a set of transformations that amount to a shift in the parameters of the process of value creation. In the emerging new knowledge-driven economic system, innovation constitutes the foundation of the competitiveness and value-creation capabilities of economic organizations. However, as a consequence of the structural transformations associated with the emergence of the new economy, innovation is migrating toward a more complex topology of networks, which "pass through" the organizational structures of individual firms. Innovation is not something happening "inside" organizations. The process of innovation is increasingly driven by open-source networks of cooperation and involves dynamic interrelationships between technological transformations, organizational capabilities of firms, and public institutional and regulatory structures supportive of innovation and entrepreneurship.

The diffusion of new ICT throughout the whole economy, which is a key condition for productivity growth, depends on broad-based transformations involving business organizations, the institutions, and culture of society. The central challenge of modern management as well as public policy-making in this context has to do with the development of strategic synergies between technological transformations, firms' organizational and knowledge-creating capabilities, emerging market and industrial structures, and public institutions. This is a tall order, but as with previous profound economic dislocations, the central challenge confronting individual organizations and economic systems is not one of adoption of technology on the level of the firm. It is one of developing institutions that nurture and support the economic potential of the emerging new knowledge-driven economy within a flexible but socially balanced mode of economic development.