Innovative Networks Co Operation In National Innovation Systems

This book analyses the role of networks in innovation and technology diffusion. It reviews policy initiatives to promote efficient networking in selected OECD countries, and draws the main implications for public policy.

Synthesising the results of a multi-year OECD project on national innovation systems (NIS), this publication demonstrates how the NIS approach can be implemented in designing and implementing more efficient technology and innovation policies.

This study defines the aims and tools of a new innovation policy and identifies examples of good policy practice recently implemented in OECD countries.

Policies to stimulate innovation at national and local levels must both build on and contribute to the dynamics of innovative clusters. This book presents a series of papers written by policy makers and academic experts in the field, that demonstrate why and how this can be done.

Innovation networks are a major source for acquiring new information and knowledge and thus for supporting innovation processes. Despite the many theoretical and empirical contributions to the explanation of networks, many questions still remain open. For example: How can networks, if they do not emerge by their own, be initiated? How can fragmentation in innovation systems be overcome? And how can networking experience from market economies be transferred to the emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe? By presenting a selection of papers which address innovation networking from theoretical and political viewpoints, the book aims at giving answers to these questions.

The idea behind this book is that institutions are important when it comes to explaining the specialisation and performance of national innovation systems. The idea is not new. But largely the institution-concept has remained somewhat vague and unspecified in the literature. This book is valuable since it succeeds in opening up the black box of institutions and organisations. The distinction between institutions at different levels and how they link up and form a systemic whole is especially original and fruitful. The interdisciplinary team behind the book has also produced a welcome antidote to the current tendency to benchmark innovation systems exclusively on the basis of quantitative indicators. The analysis demonstrates that some national systems do better in some specific areas because of being supported by institutions that are sometimes deeply rooted in history and culture. This is why imitating best-practice across countries is not a straight forward thing to do. Bengt-Åke Lundvall, Aalborg University, Denmark Innovation and Institutions is an extensive elaboration on the make up of systems of innovation. It examines why some countries are more innovative than others, why national styles of innovation differ, and goes on to explore why some countries make radical innovations but fail to successfully market them, whilst others making incremental innovations have more commercial success. The book draws on a variety of different literatures and perspectives to illustrate the organizational and institutional dimensions of national innovation systems. Literatures discussed include the economics of innovation, organizational sociology, administrative science, institutional economics, organizational learning, network analysis, business systems, economic governance and regulation. This truly interdisciplinary book will be invaluable to academics and researchers focussing on innovation in a wide range of fields. It will also strongly appeal to practitioners and policymakers concerned with innovation.

Benoît Godin is a Professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Montreal. Models abound in science, technology, and society (STS) studies and in science, technology, and innovation (STI) studies. They are continually being invented, with one author developing many versions of the same model over time. At the same time, models are regularly criticized. Such is the case with the most influential model in STS-STI: the linear model of innovation. In this book, Benoît Godin examines the emergence and diffusion of the three most important conceptual models of innovation from the early twentieth century to the late 1980s: stage models, linear models, and holistic models. Godin first traces the history of the models of innovation constructed during this period, considering why these particular models came into being and what use was made of them. He then rethinks and debunks the historical narratives of models developed by theorists of innovation. Godin documents a greater diversity of thinkers and schools than in the conventional account, tracing a genealogy of models beginning with anthropologists, industrialists, and practitioners in the first half of the twentieth century to their later formalization in STS-STI. Godin suggests that a model is a conceptualization, which could be narrative, or a set of conceptualizations, or a paradigmatic perspective, often in pictorial form and reduced discursively to a simplified representation of reality. Why are so many things called models? Godin claims that model has a rhetorical function. First, a model is a symbol of “scientificity.” Second, a model travels easily among scholars and policy makers. Calling a conceptualization or narrative or perspective a model facilitates its propagation.

This highly original book provides an engaging and critical introduction to the knowledge economy. The knowledge economy is a potent force pervading global and national policy circles. Yet few people outside the field of economics understand its central ideas and practices. This book makes these accessible. But it does much more. It provokes 'conversations' between the knowledge economy and those marginalized economies that haunt it: the risk, gift, libidinal and survival economies. These illuminate the knowledge economy's shortcomings and point to alternative possible systems of exchange and sets of values. This multi-disciplinary study takes the knowledge economy out of the hands of the economists and brings it into creative tension with the ideas of key thinkers from sociology, anthropology, philosophy and ecology. Illustrating the benefits of conversing with the ghosts of alternative economies, this provocative book will unsettle the way in which the knowledge economy is understood. Groundbreaking and globally applicable, it has been authored by internationally respected authors and its conceptual breadth pertains to a range of disciplines and gives it its wide appeal.

Delivering IT projects on time and within budget while maintaining privacy, security, and accountability is one of the major public challenges of our time. The Handbook of Public Information Systems, Second Edition addresses all aspects of public IT projects while emphasizing a common theme: technology is too important to leave to the technocrats.