The theoretical-historical foundations of paradigms’ and ‘national systems of innovation’: the contributions of Adam Smith and Charles Babbage - The notions of ‘paradigm’ and ‘national system of innovation’ have experienced a rather hectic period in economics in the 1990s, particularly within the evolutionary school of thought, where they have been first applied. Often these notions are jointly used to explain path dependence and cumulative growth processes, or the context in which different capabilities are developed. If the use of these analytical tools is quite recent, the origins of the notions themselves are not. The main aim of the present work is to look extensively at the works of two ancient economists which have anticipated these concepts, namely to Adam Smith and Charles Babbage, and point out some of the analogies which can be drawn between theirs and more recent notions.
