The course analyzes the issue of innovation and technological change as an economic problem by studying its essential components such as, for example, the sources of innovation, market failures, and the main mechanisms for correcting such failures. The course aims to provide the student with the necessary tools to study and understand the innovation process from a systemic perspective in which public intervention policies play a fundamental role, clarifying how they can influence technological change and the mechanisms of innovation. The study of techniques and methodologies for the co-creation of intervention policies is a characterizing element of the course. In particular, the themes of the ex-ante evaluation of the acceptability of intervention policies, participatory planning processes, the issue of "smart growth" as promoted by the European Union are examined.