1st International Congress Jean-Baptiste Say
SAYS Conference 2014 – RNI Summer School 2014

August 27th – 30th, 2014
Boulogne-sur-Mer/Auchy
Nord/Pas-de-Calais, France

The economic thought of industrial revolutions:
innovation, entrepreneurship and business cycles

The 1st International Congress Jean-Baptiste Say aims to update the approaches of the history of economic thought in the fields of industrial revolutions and the sociotechnical paradigms, as well as to observe how national traditions, specific contexts, and epochs have marked the development of theory in these fields… To begin with the discussion of the theories of the 18th and 19th centuries and their extensions to the contemporary theories of sustainable development. What role and place for technical progress yesterday and today? How did the economists experience the socio-economic change? Did they (or not) detect it? Did they give a coherent sense of the changes that could be chronologically and geographically far apart? What was their vision of the transformations that industrialisation provoked? Was the Industrial Revolution really “revolutionary” in their vision? What role should be given to services and innovation in the major industrial changes? Can we give a broad and open definition of innovation? This questioning can also raise new questions: what is the place of services and their innovation in long waves? May the current trend towards deindustrialisation of developed economies be interpreted as a process of destruction of the old industrial structures and creation of services firms? Then, is the Schumpeterian entrepreneurship also active in services?

The 1st SAYS Congress will consist of two parts:

• a conference where the theories of Jean-Baptiste Say will be at the heart of scientific presentations and discussions will host researchers interested in the theories of innovation and long waves;
• a summer school will approach specifically doctoral students and young researchers whose works combine theory and economic facts about entrepreneurship, innovation, growth and development of new economic and social practices (information and knowledge economy/society, social economy, etc.).

The first International Congress Jean-Baptiste Say is open to researchers and gives a substantial place to the works of doctoral students. Historical and international comparisons are welcome. Since the Congress is interdisciplinary, the participants can be researchers in economics, management, history and sociology.