| Speaker | Dr. Erkki Karo (Senior Research fellow, Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia; GRIPS Visiting Scholar (JSPS postdoctoral fellow)) |
|---|---|
| Time | 17:30 - 19:00, November 1, 2016 (Doors open at 17:10) |
| Venue | Room 4A, 4th Floor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies(ACCESS) |
| Sponsor | GRIPS Innovation, Science and Technology Policy Program (GIST) |
| Language | English |
| Fee | Free (Pre-registraion required) |
Most innovation policy experts would probably agree that supporting innovation both in new radical innovation based industries (characterized by high uncertainties and 'high-risk high-return' dynamics) as well as in complex established legacy sectors (characterized by institutional complexities and entrenched interest) requires governments or 'innovation bureaucracies' with capacities to both 'innovate' in innovation policy (to search for better policy instruments and organizational designs) and to effectively implement these policies. But how do innovation bureaucracies create and sustain such complementary capacities? Is the currently popular trend of 'darpafication' of innovation policies - the creation of DARPA-like 'change agents' - the only and best solution?
In this presentation we will look at the historical and modern evolutions of innovation bureaucracies across different contexts (US, Europe, East Asia). We argue that the debates on how to organize innovation policies have not changed much since the emergence of modern academic research on management and innovation in early 20th century. Scholars and policy-makers have debated for more than a century over the merits of two key forms of organization (and specific capacities they embody): to simplify, the main debate has been over should one stick to modernizing 'Weberian' meritocracies, or move towards 'Schumpeterian' governments?
We will show based on the historical accounts and modern experiences from US, Europe and East Asia that most successful innovation bureaucracies have been characterized by context specific organizational set-ups of innovation bureaucracies that combine the merits of these so-called Weberian and Schumpeterian organizational forms. In other words, successful innovation bureaucracies are ambidextrous. We further show that the specific techno-economic, politico-economic and politico-administrative contexts of each country determine the feasible (as opposed to ideal or desirable) organizational designs of innovation bureaucracies. Based on these arguments, we will also discuss the current trends of 'experimental governance' and 'darpafication' of innovation policies in Europe and East Asia.
The presentation will be based on a forthcoming book Rainer Kattel, Wolfgang Drechsler and Erkki Karo (2017).
Innovation Bureaucracy: How Governments Successfully Organise Innovation, Yale University Press.
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