This special issue of Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice (ISBN 0-9750436-7-6) addresses 'Conditions for Innovation in Biotechnology and Telecommunication'. Each article addresses one or both of these emerging technologies as well as aspects of innovation processes, and each thereby contributes to the growing literature on technologies. The editors have worked extensively on modern biotechnology and telecommunication, and therefore we also have broader ambitions beyond the selection of individual papers to be published. Taken as a whole, this special issue aims to contribute towards specifying the similarities and differences during innovation processes in emerging technologies. This piece provides some background information on the editors, the general problems and three themes to be addressed in this special issue, before introducing each subsequent article.This special issue is the result of a longer debate about how and why modern biotechnology, ICT, and telecommunication develop and impact on society, among us and among many other researchers. Both of us, Erik Bohlin and Maureen McKelvey, work at the School of Technology Management & Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, where we have the great fortune to have many excellent students and colleagues interested in innovation and interested in these particular technologies. Earlier versions of papers for this special issue were presented at a workshop we organized at Chalmers (May 19-20, 2003) entitled 'Innovations and Entrepreneurship in Biotech/ Pharmaceuticals and in IT/ Telecommunication'.1 Hence, as guest editors, we wish to gratefully acknowledge the financial support from Chalmers to stimulate research and teaching related to management & economic issues in telecom and biotech.One reason for putting together a special issue is that we are convinced that comparing and contrasting conditions for innovation is a crucial issue for researchers, government policy-makers, firm managers and others associated with emerging technologies. To what extent can general principles be identified for this type of innovation process? To what extent can general principles be identified for innovations as drivers of a particular type of economic dynamics? To what extent can each emerging technology be understood as a unique historical case? Deciding about the range of possible policy interventions requires a re-assessment of the extent to which emerging technologies are influenced by general principles, as opposed to the vagrancies of historical circumstances. Our ambition with devoting a special issue to modern biotechnology and telecommunication is to encourage others - and ourselves - to move beyond the details of innovation in specific technologies to strive for more systematic and comprehensive comparisons.