Global and local processes in a model of innovation

Abstract

In this work we present the introduction of spatial constraints in a model of generation and diffusion of innovations. The presence of spatial limitations introduces several feedbacks, whose main effects are the decrease of global diversity in favour of a higher robustness, despite the apparent minor success of the individual agents. All these features hold contemporarily, but the individuated feedbacks are able to explain their only apparently contradictory nature. None of these results is obvious, nor can it be simply deduced from the qualitative theory. Moreover, the simulations could make possible comparisons between the model behaviours and the theory claims, indicating new ways of improvement and development © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.