This paper contributes insights into the debate concerning the emergence of innovation ecosystems. More specifically, we propose a knowledge-intensive innovation ecosystem. Building on prior research on collective action, innovation governance, and knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship, we elaborate on existing theory by presenting a conceptual framework to articulate why ecosystems require the combination of top-down exploration of policy alternatives by policymakers, together with bottom-up knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial activity in order to progress towards sustainable development. Through our case study of the Maritime Cluster of West Sweden, we propose that sustained incentives for knowledge-intensive innovative entrepreneurship, along with more experimentation and new forms of collaboration by policymakers in the Maritime Cluster, are needed in order for progress towards innovation-led sustainable development to occur. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This article examines two factors commonly thought to be potential contributors to business success, namely diversity and the logic that drives entrepreneurial decision making. The empirical context is new ventures, and data collected using a survey of new ventures are used to investigate the contribution of founder team informational diversity to innovation performance, as well as the moderating effect of the degree of causation logic used in decision making.
The findings confirm that founder team informational diversity is positively related to both idea generation and the implementation of ideas into new products or services. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the relationships between founder diversity and both idea generation and realized innovation are moderated by the logic of entrepreneurial decision making. The relationship between founder team informational diversity and idea generation is stronger when decision making is based on strong causation logic, while the relationship between founder team informational diversity and realized innovation is stronger when decision making is based to a lesser degree on causation logic. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The purpose of this article is to better understand the challenges of avoiding the dark side of technological innovation. Specifically, we analyse 10 public investigations started as a reaction to a major crisis in regenerative medicine at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, associated with the clinician-scientist Paolo Macchiarini. We interpret the reaction as an attempt to restore the balance between the stimulation and regulation of technological innovation processes by clarifying ambiguities in the regulation at the interface between research and practice. We conceptualise these ambiguities as grey zonesâsituations when it is unclear if the benefits of experimentation outweigh its risksâand propose that grey zones are continually created and resolved as actors in innovation governance systems counterbalance the generation of novelty and the risk of negative unintended consequences. © 2020, © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Our purpose is to propose a conceptual model of the growth of knowledge in innovation policy making. We explicitly draw upon evolutionary economics to conceptualize learning as an evolutionary process of the growth of knowledge about policy problems and their solutions. Our model points to the central role of the variation and selective retention of policy alternatives and contributes to the current debate about how to build capacity through and for mission-oriented innovation policies, to address grand social challenges. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved.
This paper proposes an evolutionary model of science policy. The paper draws upon evolutionary economics and associated applications to theory of the firm on routines and the role of knowledge in decision-making. This strand of literature is called the growth of knowledge perspective, because routines are assumed to embody useful knowledge about problems to be solved and potential solutions to them. This paper develops a conceptual model, based upon this literature and Campbell’s evolutionary epistemology. The paper proposes that the equivalent of firm routines is, in the science policy context, public policy alternatives such as policy instruments. Moreover, the paper develops notions of science policy fields, and puts them in an evolutionary model in order to understand the creation of variety, retention and selection amongst policy alternatives. © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
The generation and clinical adoption of workable therapies in regenerative medicine has been slow, despite its alleged potential to relieve suffering and improve health outcomes. This has been explained by a fundamental difference between advanced cell and gene therapies and conventional drug- and device-based therapies, raising questions about how the readiness of existing healthcare systems to adopt such therapies can be evaluated and improved. In this paper, we use the lessons learned from the Macchiarini crisis at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden to take the first step in formulating the concept of innovation governance readiness. We propose it as a tool to help evaluate and improve the ability of private, public and civil society actors to work together to build and put into practice therapies based on emerging medical technologies such as regenerative medicine. © 2021 Future Medicine Ltd.
Previous studies on innovation governance have focused on the governance of science, technology, and innovation from a long-term perspective. In this article we focus on the short term by exploring the generation and use of new scientific and technical knowledge to address an urgent societal crisis. We empirically analyse the emergency response during the first wave of COVID-19 infections in Iceland using a conceptual framework based on three theoretical components, namely, emergency management, innovation governance, and the innovation process as a problem-solving process. The empirical analysis is built on a systematic analysis of secondary data. Based on the results, we conclude that improvisation processes using existing knowledge and capabilities and triggered by unanticipated problems during a crisis are in some cases sources of successful innovation. In these cases initial problem-solving processes characterized by improvisation can be interpreted as blind variations that are retained and diffused through a series of complementary problem-solving processes that generate and use new scientific and technical knowledge. Furthermore, we extend the concept of innovation governance readiness to include both the readiness to exploit technological opportunities and the readiness to address unanticipated problems during a crisis and propose that our extension is useful for integrating long-term and short-term aspects of innovation governance. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This article focuses upon issues that public policy makers need to address, when trying to stimulate world-leading research into new areas, which are potentially also valuable to solving societal challenges. Our analysis helps contribute to the theoretical discussions about governance of new knowledge. We focus upon the sequence of events surrounding the main actors of a recent crisis of regenerative medicine in Sweden. We define governance theoretically, and use a conceptual model in order to structure the empirical analysis. Regenerative medicine is an interesting setting to explore these topics, not least because both public and private actors are often involved, and because governments struggle with how to promote ‘translational research’, e.g. diffusing scientific research into clinical practice. Our case study helps understand the process that led up to a crisis in regenerative medicine and identifies and discusses four issues that need to be addressed by policy makers. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press.
Entrepreneurs create and appropriate value by designing a system of interconnected and interdependent activities that determine how they do business. These activity systems span beyond the individual firm and compose complex interconnected ecosystems. Current research focuses on how entrepreneurs design new activity systems but do not focus on how these changes create new entrepreneurial opportunities and for whom. In this paper we ask why some people but not others pursue entrepreneurial opportunities following changes in an activity system. Based on Lachmann’s theory of capital we develop a theoretical framework for analyzing how changes in the structure of activities affect the knowledge required to pursue subsequent entrepreneurial opportunities. © 2015 Academy of Management. All rights reserved.
The purpose of this work is to investigate relationships between knowledge and opportunities in new ventures. More specifically, this work proposes and empirically tests how potential absorptive capacity is related with the identification of opportunities in new technology-based firms (NTBFs). To take into account the unique nature of NTBFs we divide potential absorptive capacity into problem absorptive capacity, i.e. the ability to identify and acquire knowledge of the goals, aspirations and needs of current and potential customers, and solution absorptive capacity, i.e. the ability to identify and acquire external knowledge of solutions to fulfill them. We develop three hypotheses, which predict that both problem absorptive capacity and solution absorptive capacity will be positively related with the identification of opportunities in NTBFs and that they will reinforce each other. The findings support the importance of making a distinction between the two proposed dimensions of potential absorptive capacity and shed light on their effectiveness and interaction for the identification of opportunities. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd
The purpose of this work is to investigate the influence of performance feedback on decisions about R&D—more specifically R&D intensity and R&D direction, ranging from exploitation to exploration—and how this varies depending on top management team orientation. Using panel data collected from a large sample of technology-based firms over nine years, hypotheses about how the relationship between performance feedback and decisions about R&D are moderated by the technology orientation of top management teams are tested. Overall, the findings support the basic premises put forth, namely that top management team orientation influences decisions about R&D in response to performance feedback. This sheds new light on our understanding of the relationship between performance feedback and decisions about R&D in technology-based firms. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd
Entrepreneurs create and appropriate value by designing a system of interconnected and interdependent activities that determine how they do business. These activity systems span beyond the individual firm and compose complex interconnected ecosystems. Current research focuses on how entrepreneurs design new activity systems but do not focus on how these changes create new entrepreneurial opportunities and for whom. In this paper we ask why some people but not others identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities following changes in an activity system. Based on Lachmann’s theory of capital we develop a theoretical framework for analyzing how changes in the structure of activities in terms of knowledge substitution affect the knowledge required to identify and exploit opportunities by focusing on the role of complementarities and multiple specificities of capital resources. The results have implications for our understanding of the endogenous nature of entrepreneurship and the coevolution of business model innovation and innovation ecosystems.