Suchergebnisse

Effective research and innovation (R&I) policy depends on the extent to which ideas, interests and institutional mechanisms for policy making work together rather than work against each other. In a political governance model for effective R&I policy in the EU-28, the separate influence of inter-ministerial coordination, regulatory impact assessment extended to sustainability checks, parliamentary committee surveillance, media attention and societal consultation is investigated. Interaction effects are investigated in a set-theoretic analysis for the econometrically best-fit model. Our results show that the societal consultation, policy-informed opposition and sector-informed informal policy coordination are necessary but not sufficient to bring about effectiveness to R&I policy. Their influence on effectiveness of R&I policy depends on the combination with either media attention or Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) extended to sustainability checks. We reached these results with the help of ordered logit estimations and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analyses using 2011-2013 (SGI) data of Bertelsmann Stiftung and Lexis Nexis Academic.

Innovation serves many purposes. In this paper we study new varieties of innovation and innovation policy which address societal challenges in the largest cities in Europe. These metropolitan areas consistently show resounding characteristics in terms of multiplicities of innovation, governance and societal challenges. They serve as 'living labs' and 'lead-markets' for solutions to societal challenges. The identified and analysed cases of social innovation initiatives in these metropolitan areas organize for new resourceful interactions between the demand for social innovations and the capacities to generate multi-domain solutions. It is the context dependencies of these cases of social innovation that open up diverse interest-based possibilities. In this daily life-world context a multiplicity of actors select local-interactive processes. The broad range of actors includes: government research labs, public sector, creative and other service industries, social entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, student platforms, and profession-linked open communities. Such interactions represent emerging transformative capabilities for addressing societal challenges, turning local-societal (political/administrative; economic/ financial; technological/social) solutions into multi-level (regional, national, global) opportunities, and a wider range of benefits. In metropolitan areas, these multi-domain and multi-level potentials are activated by organizing societal synergies between "social participative creativity" and "economic innovative efficiency" for any level. Existing concepts of innovation systems do not capture and explain these unique societal synergies, because they only focus on one specific type of innovation and one specific type of sectoral, technological, socio-technical, social or spatio-organizational (national, regional) system of innovation. It requires acknowledging that innovation and innovation systems are not only instrumental for economic benefits in a system-technocratic sense, but also for addressing societal challenges in a grassroots-communicative sense. Therefore we construct an overarching yet deepened concept: "the societal system of innovation", a theoretical-analytical framework based on empirical background. We do not add yet another type of innovation system, but acknowledge the overlaps and linkages between the existing types of innovation systems. The existing types are the special cases of the societal system of innovation with respect to the presence/absence of organizations, where organizational rules and interactional play between them. Over-embedded or lacking interactions among these special-case innovation systems cannot capture evolving contextuality (life-world) for innovation. This shortcoming provides a complementary policy rationale for being critical in the organization of widened interactions (S2S, system-to-system; G2G, grassroots-to-grassroots) and deepened contextuality (S2G, systems-to-grassroots; and G2S, grassroots-to-systems) under the concept, instruments, measurement/assessment of the societal system of innovation.

Purpose: In this paper, we examine the status, prospects and organization of OPV research, innovation and governance in three major world regions: Northern America, Western Europe and East Asia through our constructed evolutionary cognitive-institutional framework of reference. Method: We gathered data from a 65-question internet-based survey conducted from February 2013 to April 2013 with OPV researchers and research managers around the world. A multi-method (investigative/exploratory, descriptive statistics) approach is used for analyses and discussions. Results: Overall findings show that the organization of OPV research, innovation and governance in Northern America, Western Europe and East Asia reflect similar aspects, patterns with their political economies surveyed in the literature: Northern America's neo-liberal market and finance orientation, Western Europe's orientation to sustainable development and policy-driven research, coordinated-regulatory inspirations and research-driven system, and East Asia's neo-developmental state view with international trade, technology-export orientation. Commercialization prospects in China are lowest and highest in the US but even there expectations of market sales are low. As a disruptive technology which is competing with older generations of PV and other energy technologies, OPV requires a coordinated effort involving international cooperation, the use of public and private money. Positive elements of the three world regions (availability of venture capital in the US, the meritocratic research system and ambitious goals for renewable energy in the EU, and the willingness of the Chinese government to back sunrise industries) could be usefully exploited. Keywords: Political Economy, Emerging Energy Technology, Research, Innovation, Governance, Organic Photovoltaics