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58 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

question. However, their book does raise questions about economics and
provokes scholars to think outside the box.
Other economists argue that it is time to reexamine the accepted economic
norms and popularization of globalism (Saul, 2005). What is obvious about the
future of economics is that, as Gibson notes (1997, p. 3) “economics will be
based not on land, money, or raw materials but on intellectual capital.” When
the case was first written in the late 1990s fuel cells were not known to
economists let alone the general public. Today, fuel cells are widely known.
New innovations and commercialization into the marketplace are the eco-
nomic drivers for the future. However, the technological innovation case study
exemplifies another significant issue: current economic theories and business
management practices cannot describe or explain the commercialization
phenomenon for business development.
Conventional economic development theories of today are inadequate by
defining innovation commercialization as due to “externalities” of one sort or
another. Or more insignificantly, new business products or services depend on
“market study” and demands. There are, for example, simply not “five forces”
at work. And to attempt to explain the commercialization of the fuel cells in
this manner is fallacious. Business economics is simply not a phenomenon that
occurs in a “black box” subject to external influences.
Still other economic theorists have attempted to create new frameworks for
understanding and explaining the commercialization and deployment of
innovations into the business community. Yet these attempts are drawn from
the same neoclassical functionalist paradigm and therefore suffer from the
same problems. Resource-based theory is a good attempt in the investigation
of those elements (both tangible and intangible) which a firm may then turn
into various business opportunities. This approach clearly recognizes “intel-
lectual” or knowledge capital, for example, as a valuable resource beyond the
conventional economic definition of the firm. With its focus on capabilities as
central to business development, there is a growing concern that any business
or “firm” still remains a mystery. In other words, no economist knows how
companies, businesses, or firms develop, grow, and sustainable themselves.
The basic problem remains and is recognized by forward-thinking economic
theorists: What is the firm? Is there a theory of the firm?
Nonetheless, as argued indeed there is a “theory of the firm” when the
scholar uses as the starting point, looking inside the firm first. An under-
standing of the everyday business life of the firm (in our case, research that
turns innovation into a new commercial venture) provides the opportunity for
theory building, which has never before been considered in economics. In
other words, when economists start from a Lifeworld perspective that is rooted
inside the firm and builds from the ground up, then the results are likely to be
more significant, accurate, and scientific regarding how a business operates,
grows, and is managed.