Book excerpt: The Foundation of Complex Evolving Systems seeks to offer an integrated analysis of the anatomy and physiology of the capitalist engine of generation and exploitation of technological organizational and institutional innovations - from the drivers of knowledge accumulation, to the modes in which such knowledge is incorporated into business firms, all the way to the processes of innovation-driven "Schumpeterian competition" and macroeconomic growth. In that, it advances the interpretation of such patterns, in terms of economies seen as complex evolving systems. The basic objects of analysis are the history of the emergence and development of modern capitalist economies and their current functionings. Indeed , the tall ambition of the book is to address two basic questions at the core of the whole economic discipline since its inception. They regard, first, the drivers and patterns of change of the capitalistic machine of production and innovation and, second, the mechanisms of coordination among a multitude of self-seeking economic agents often characterized by conflicting interests. In order to do that, this Manual, in addition to the nature of technology and innovation, considers from a profoundly alternative perspective, all domains of analysis typically addressed (or not) by microeconomic texts, including micro behaviours, the theory of the firm, the theory of production, consumption patterns, market dynamics, and industrial evolution.