Transcript What do we know about innovation?

What do we know about
innovation?
by
Jan Fagerberg,
Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture,
University of Oslo
One picture tells more …
Figure 1."Innovation" in Title
Article s/ all docume nts, share in 10 000 (Social Scie ncie s Citation Inde x, SSCI and Arts &
Humanitie s Citation Inde x, A&HCI)
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Social science, articles 1975-
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Social science, all documents -1974
Humanities, all documents 1975-
2005
Innovation studies – an emerging
field
• Fuzzy concepts
• Many different perspectives
• … and tribes (that do not speak the same
languages)
• A holistic understanding needs to be ”constructed”
• TEARI/Handbook of Innovation (OUP) project,
an attempt to do this; historians, economists,
geographers, sociologists .
Fuzzy concept: Innovation
• Definitions, classification or theory?
• Definition no1: The introduction of novelty
into the economic (and social?) sphere;
- What? Invention and innovation,
- Which context? Global or local?
- Who? Innovators and imitators
• Definition no 2: ”New combinations” of
ideas, resources and capabilities
The ”combinatory” dynamics of
innovation and diffusion
• Innovation and knowledge: Not the same
but related
• The need for complementarity between
different factors
• The cumulative nature of innovation; the
interaction between innovation and
diffusion
Kline and Rosenberg (1986)
“it is a serious mistake to treat an innovation as if it were a well-defined,
homogenous thing that could be identified as entering the economy at a
precise date – or becoming available at a precise point in time. (…) The
fact is that most important innovations go through drastic changes in
their lifetimes – changes that may, and often do, totally transform their
economic significance. The subsequent improvements in an invention
after its first introduction may be vastly more important, economically,
than the initial availability of the invention in its original form” (Kline
and Rosenberg 1986, p.283)
Classifications of innovation
Type;
Impact;
•
•
•
•
•
• revolutionary (GPT),
• radical,
• marginal/incremental
(”reinvention”)
product,
process,
supply,
market,
Organization
Level;
• architectural
• modular
(Henderson and Clark 1990)
Innovation at the firm level
• The rules of the game; uncertainty and
information over-flow; the role of strategy
• Firm-level knowledge (”organizational memory”,
Nelson and Winter 1982) as organizationally
embedded and cumulative; facilitates certain paths
(innovations) and constrains others; inertia
• The need to balance ”exploitation and
exploration”; organizing for innovation
• The importance of open-ness and ”absorptive
capacity” (Cohen and Levinthal 1990)
The systemic character of
innovation
• Firms do not innovate in isolation;
“the innovation journey is a collective achievement that
requires numerous entrepreneurs in both the public and
private sectors” (Van de Ven et al. 1999, p.149, “social
systems of innovation”).
• Spatial systems: National (Lundvall, Nelson) or
regional (Cooke 1998)
• ”Technological systems”(Hughes, Carlsson and
Stankiewicz )/ ”triple helix”
• Sectoral systems (Malerba et al)
Innovation-systems: Appealing
but underdeveloped approach.
• Lack of theoretical reflection and interaction
between empirical and conceptual work.
• What determine the boundaries of systems?
• The dynamics is not well specified. What are the
main activities, feedback mechanisms etc, and
how do these interact?
• Need to explore factors leading to path dependent
dynamics; as well as the role of open-ness in
generating change.
Innovation and performance
• Used to be ignored, this changed with ”new
growth theory” (Romer 1990) which predicts; the
higher R&D, and the larger the country, the higher
the rate of growth
• Little progress since then. Why? Based on an
outdated understanding of innovation?
• Macro-theorizing needs to take research on
innovation in firms more thoroughly into account.
Innovation and policy
• Old view: Innovation is a specialized activity that
depends on science; subsidize science and R&D
• New view: Innovation is a broad, pervasive
phenomenon that goes on everywhere (and
interacts with diffusion)
• In most cases the critical constraining factor is not
science – or R&D – but demand
• Consequences for policy?
Conclusions
• Need for different tribes to interact more
• Researchers focusing on macro and meso should
study research on innovation processes in firm,
and vice versa.
• More work needed on how knowledge and
innovation operate at the organizational level,
• …on organizational innovation, and
• what the real constraints for innovation - and the
appropriate policy-responses - are.