Demand, challenges, and innovation. Making sense of new trends in innovation policy

By Wouter P. C. Boon, J. Edler. 2018

224 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In recent years, the traditional rationale for innovation policy has been expanded to more explicitly contribute to tackling societal challenges. There is broad agreement that demand should be at the core of challenge-oriented innovation policy. Nevertheless, demand and demand conditions are poorly understood and not yet in the focus of challenge-oriented innovation policy. This article conceptualises demand-oriented innovation policies and their links to societal challenges. We differentiate demand and need, and highlight different forms of demand articulation. Then, we characterise three ideal-typical policies that relate to demand: traditional innovation policy, sector-specific policy, and challenge-oriented policy. These three ideal-types are discussed focussing on output legitimacy, input legitimacy, and operational requirements. This discussion highlights the specific challenges and opportunities of demand-oriented innovation policies and allows to derive a set of recommendations to increase the effectiveness of such policies.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7cc22631ef5f2bee31aadbbfc81c691780f4d2d1

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Citations in the corpus

Exploring the normative turn in regional innovation policy: responsibility and the quest for public value (2019, unknown): “This has motivated recent advocates of a greater or improved challenge orientation in innovation policy (Mazzucato, 2013; Schot & Steinmueller, 2018) and the use of targeted policies to articulate societal needs on the ‘demand side’ (Boon & Edler, 2018).”
Circular futures: What Will They Look Like? (2020, background): “, 2019), articulate them with the demand side (Boon and Edler, 2018) and break up path-dependencies in the existing system (Schot and Steinmueller, 2018).”
Low‐carbon transition risks for finance (2020, background): “Through their demand-pull effect, preferences can also affect the pace and direction of technological change, which can interact with government procurement policies (Boon & Edler, 2018).”