An earlier version of this paper was prepared for the joint OECD/Eurostat workshop on innovation surveys, OECD, Paris …, June 30th 1999. The paper addresses some issues about the nature of innovation surveys (particularly the new Community … Innovation Surveys) and how they might be improved to take on board several crucial developments in contemporary advanced …

context of ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991) and is related to the literature on innovation systems. The paper …