What are the next challenges for innovation policy development?

I have had the pleasure of taking part in the annual meeting of Taftie , the Association for Technology Implementation in Europe. This is a club for industry oriented research councils and innovation policy agencies in (and beyond) Europe.

It was a very interesting conference program, and our Turkish hosts from TTGV did an excellent job. Still, I am not going to make an attempt to summarize the various interventions here.

I was asked to contribute to the session on global trends on innovation, skillfully led by technology policy veteran Juhani Kuusi. I presented what I believe to be some of the most important challenges for innovation policy development in the coming years:

1. A shift from a technology push perspective to a vision of learning. The linear model is dead, but it won’t lie down, and I am amazed to see how many policy initiatives are based on the notion that most ideas and technologies are born in universities.
2. A better understanding of innovation in resource based industries. There is nothing wrong with investing in high tech industries. Still, one should remember that “low tech” industries like agriculture, fisheries, wine production and oil and gas can be very profitable activities. Moreover, they are very knowledge intensive, even if the companies themselves do not invest much in R&D.
   
3. Innovation in – and the role of — services. Services are dominating all countries as regards employment, but we are still struggling to understand what innovation is and should be in this very heterogeneous sector.
4. The effects of public sector innovation. The public sector is an integrated part of the national innovation systems, but we continue to treat it as a sphere outside the economy. Public institutions can be very innovative and their innovation processes often take place in tandem with industry.
5. Understanding competence flows in the innovation system. To give one example: Everybody talks about how universities are to deliver ideas and patents to industry. Fine. But their major contribution to industrial innovation is probably the fact that they deliver employees that are able to find, understand and make use of knowledge developed elsewhere. Do we understand the role of university R&D in that process?
6. Sociocultural framework conditions. It does not matter how clever your scientists are, if you do not have a culture and social systems that are able to implement this knowledge in a sensible way. People’s ability to innovate and being entrepreneurs is dependent on regulatory framework conditions as well as the autonomy of the workers.
7. The heterogeneity of innovation systems. All countries have different historical trajectories and different natural and geographical advantages. There is not one innovation policy recipe that fits all countries. We may all learn from Finland, Ireland and Israel, but we should not copy them.
8. Cultural understanding in a globalised economy. In a global market place, knowledge of both local and global cultures becomes essential. Suddenly the social sciences, the humanities and the arts become important vehicles for industrial innovation policies.

If you are interested you can download my whole presentation here. (PDF file)

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Here is an extended variant of this presentation made for the Innovation Forum in Innovation Norway (in Norwegian):

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