Jakob Edler

Scenarios of technology and innovation policies in Europe: Investigating future governance ☆

In Europe, public research, technology and innovation policies are no longer exclusively in the hands of national authorities: increasingly, national initiatives are supplemented by, or even competing with, regional innovation policies or transnational programmes, in particular the activities of the European Union. At the same time, industrial innovation increasingly occurs within international networks. Are we witnessing a change of governance in European innovation policy? Based on some theoretical assumptions concerning the relationship between the “political systems” and “innovation systems” in Europe, the paper speculates about the future governance of innovation policies, trying to pave ways for empirical analyses. It sketches three scenarios stretching from (1) the idea of an increasingly centralised and dominating European innovation policy arena to (2) the opposite, i.e., a progressive decentralisation and open competition between partly strengthened, partly weakened national or regional innovation systems and finally to (3) the vision of a centrally “mediated” mixture of competition and cooperation between diverse regional innovation cultures and a related governance structure.

Public procurement for innovation

Public procurement can support innovative businesses in several ways: it can stimulate innovation by creating a demand for innovative products or services, help innovative firms bridge the precommercialisation gap for their innovative products and services by awarding contracts for precommercial innovations (i.e. first sales of technology), help them achieve the critical mass needed to bring prices down and be competitive, and contribute to making access to private third-party funding easier. Evidence of the impacts of public procurement on innovation is still scarce, and the conclusions are mixed . Many OECD countries have shown a growing interest in public procurement policies in recent years. Thus, public procurement can provide critical support to investments in innovation and complement other types of finance. . Public policy can foster innovative businesses by reducing developing expertise and integrating new competencies within public administration to design and monitor innovation-oriented procurement, and by stimulating innovation-oriented public procurement within public agencies. Public policy should also address the risks associated with innovation-oriented public procurement and balance the multiple goals of public procurement in order to sustain its support of innovative businesses.

Coordination within fragmentation: Governance in knowledge policy in the German federal system

The governance of Germanys public ‘knowledge system’ is characterised by a variety of coordination needs and modes in a layered and fragmented federal system. Competences are divided between horizontal sectoral ministries and agencies at the federal level and between federal level and the states (Lander), the latter being endowed with major competences in education and science policy. This fragmentation may have advantages regarding interfaces with stakeholders, but coordination between and within ministries is indeed insufficient when it comes to providing policy consistency and overall orientation. The German case shows the coordination challenges of fragmented systems and attempts to improve coherence and provide orientation through means such as (limited) disentanglement of responsibilities, strategic, cross-cutting initiatives, and the usage of standards, evaluation and advisory bodies. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Innovation procurement as projects

Public procurement is a complex process. This complexity increases considerably when the procured product or service is an innovation, which often addresses new needs, requires different skills, takes on higher risks and thus demands organizational change. In this paper we argue that because of those demands procuring innovation necessitates the use of advanced project management techniques and an intelligent multistep project design. We underpin this argument by presenting a case study of the procurement of an innovation within the UK National Health Service which had stalled for many years but then was successfully completed by using those project management techniques. We highlight the different processes needed for the procurement of innovation compared to standard, business-as-usual procurement, and we suggest the management of procurement as multi-step, multi arena projects as a strategy for innovation procurement.

Drivers of international collaboration in research

This report, written jointly by the Technopolis Group and the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (The University of Manchester), is a synthesis of a project conducted on behalf of the European Commission DG Research. This study seeks to understand what policy considerations are made when establishing and implementing science, technology and innovation (STI) linkages with other countries. The report reviews the various drivers behind international STI co-operation and explores the interactions between these drivers.

Handbook of Innovation Policy Impact

Innovation underpins competitiveness, is crucial to addressing societal challenges, and its support has become a major public policy goal. But what really works in innovation policy, and why? This Handbook, compiled by leading experts in the field, is the first comprehensive guide to understanding the logic and effects of innovation polices. The Handbook develops a conceptualisation and typology of innovation policies, presents meta-evaluations for 16 key innovation policy instruments and analyses evidence on policy-mix. For each policy instrument, underlying rationales and examples are presented, along with a critical analysis of the available impact evidence. Providing access to primary sources of impact analysis, the book offers an insightful assessment of innovation policy practice and its evaluation.

Structural innovations: towards a unified perspective?

This article argues that the intervention to generate structural innovations and with it the structural interaction between organisation actors can be understood as attempts to tackle system failures in innovation systems, mainly as regards networking and actor capabilities. However, these interventions are challenging, they often rest on simplistic assumptions on interaction and networking needs and potentially generate dysfunctional systemic effects. These challenges are discussed using illustrations of structural innovations to improve industry-academic collaborations in the UK and Germany. The article then concludes with a conceptual and policy discussion of opportunities, challenges and unintended consequences of deliberate structural innovation and intervention in structural interaction. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Die Innovationstätigkeit der deutschen Softwareindustrie

In this article we present the results of two empirical studies focusing on the structure and extent of the innovation activities of the German Software Industry and analyze distinctive features of Software Innovations. We distinguish the activities of the primary (core) Software Industry and secondary industries such as Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Motor Industry and Telecommunications. A special focus is put on the question if innovations in Software are sequential, on the role of Open Source Software and the importance of interoperability.

The innovation policy mix

As innovation policy instruments are never applied in isolation, this chapter reviews the evidence on policy mixes and the interplay of instruments in innovation policy. The chapter starts with a multi-dimensional conceptualisation of mixes and interplay, in particular distinguishing between designed versus emergent mixes. Overall, the evidence and evaluation practice as to policy mix and interplay are scarce, reflecting not only the challenges of analysing the interplay of instruments, but also the general neglect in policy making to take interplay into consideration. The chapter first presents and analyses evidence from the few evaluations which have explicitly examined how instruments interact, focusing on interplay between direct and indirect measures as well as supply and demand measures. In general, the additive effect of multiple measures targeting the same actor groups is limited. Secondly, the chapter looks at evidence from reviews of policy mixes at the country or system level. Those country reviews have mainly been conducted under the auspices of the OECD or the EU. They highlight the trends of applying policy mixes and comment on their appropriateness, identify common policy gaps and coordination issues, but rarely deliver hard evidence of system-wide interplay. Thirdly, the review looks at instances where policies or instruments have been deliberately used together, as designed mixes across policy institutions or as the portfolios of specific agencies. The chapter finally draws lessons as to policy mix practice using the conceptual framework developed.

The Governance of Socio-Technical Systems: Explaining Change

Examining the ‘who’ (agents), ‘how’ (policy instruments) and ‘why’ (societal legitimacy) of the governance process, this book presents a conceptual framework about the governance of change in socio-technical systems. Bridging the gap between disciplinary fields, expert contributions provide innovative empirical cases of different modes of governing change. The Governance of Socio-Technical Systems offers a stepping-stone towards building a theory of governance of change and presents a new research agenda on the interaction between science, technology and society.