| dc.description.abstract | In response to grand societal challenges such as climate change and inclusive and smart economic growth, a new era of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy has given rise to several ‘challenge-led’ topics and diverse expressions. This has resulted in a convoluted current state of the art and confusion among academics and policy makers in practice. This thesis conducts an integrative literature review of two of these emerging topics- ‘Transformative Innovation Policy’ (TIP) and ‘Mission-Oriented Innovation Policy’ (MIP).
To systematically study the respective properties of TIP and MIP, this study utilises insights from the Policy Sciences domain, engaging in a functional application of the Policy Cycle to investigate various aspects of the policy making process. This offers a novel and innovative approach to a systematic literature review which is operationalised to contribute a solid theoretical basis for advancing and applying the topics.
This thesis establishes what concepts of TIP and MIP are presented by the literature reflecting the current debate and how these concepts are similar or different, demonstrating to what extent, where and how the topics converge or diverge in their current understanding and further synthesising whether the topics conceptual understanding compete, complement or are neutral to one another.
Based on this analysis, the findings suggest several differences in the current TIP and MIP understanding, such as the topics’ emphasis on certain actors (users, industry, government) in different phases of the policy process, governance modes (tentative, tilted) and the focus on demand-oriented and supply-oriented instruments. Furthermore, the synthesis also presents a case to potentially combine elements of their conceptual understanding, to align both top-down (supply-oriented) and bottom-up (demand-oriented) instruments, a framework to navigate the complex and contestable problem-solution space and a deeper understanding of reflexivity and learning. Finally, the study strongly acknowledges the need for further research to develop the topics’ conceptual consistency with the purpose of navigating changes in socio-technical configurations towards socio-economic impact to address dynamic, heterogenous and ‘wicked’ grand societal challenges.
As a result, this study provides a more nuanced understanding of innovation policy for the 21st century disentangling the current debate on TIP and MIP to support attempts to develop a more refined understanding in-light-of the topics growing popularity among academics and policy makers. | |
