1 INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN COMPLEX INNOVATION SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY IN PIEDMONT Pier Paolo Patrucco ∗ Laboratorio di Economia dell’Innovazione “Franco Momigliano” Dipartimento di Economia Università di Torino and BRICK (Bureau of Research on Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge), Collegio Carlo Alberto, Moncalieri Abstract. The paper adopts a complexity perspective to understand the transformations in the institutional forms that coordinate the generation and dissemination of technological knowledge within firms. Complexity theory provides an appropriate framework to understand the evolution and transformation of economic systems. These are seen as emergent processes brought about by changes in the structure of interactions among actors. Changes in those interactions are steered by the modification in the pattern of specialisation and differentiation in the capabilities and technological skill of economic actors. The paper illustrates these elements through the evidence of the automobile cluster in Piedmont, in North- western Italy. This is characterized by the emergence of a distributed innovation platform, which is seen as a major institutional innovation in the organization of diffused technological capabilities. JEL Classification: O31; O32; O33 Keywords: Complex systems; Coordination; Institutional change; Networks; Technological knowledge 1. INTRODUCTION Complexity theory has been receiving special attention in natural as well as human and social sciences in the last decades. In particular, complexity theory progressively emerged as a new approach able to appreciate and explain both the structural and dynamic properties of transformation processes characterizing biological, human and social systems (Anderson, Arrow and Pine, 1988; Barabasi, 2002; Kauffman, 1993; Pumain, 2006; Taylor, 2001; Waldrop, 1992; Wolfram, 2002). ∗ Corresponding address: Pier Paolo Patrucco, Università di Torino, Dipartimento di Economia, Via Po 53, 10124 Torino, Italy, tel. +39 011 6702767, fax. +39 011 6702762, Pierpaolo.patrucco@unito.it