Innovation, intermediaries and societal challenges
Innovation is regarded by many as an important avenue for addressing ‘grand’ societal challenges, like the response to a changing climate. Intermediaries responding to such challenges sometimes facilitate uncommon collaborations, sparking promising innovation paths. Two recent publications by researchers at Utrecht University explore policy opportunities and challenges for linking organisations that under normal circumstances would be unlikely to collaborate.
“When a collaboration with potential for innovation breakthrough is hard to achieve it is useful to explore how policy can make a difference,” says Matthijs Janssen, assistant professor of innovation policy at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University. “This is especially true when uniting organisations around themes like societal challenges can inspire the development of novel solutions”.
Linking strong but unrelated sectors and knowledge domains
In a recent open access publication in the Cambridge Journal of Regions Economy and Society, Matthijs Janssen and Koen Frenken propose linking an economy’s strong but unrelated sectors or knowledge domains. This could be through policy that encourages joint exploration of a societal challenge. Even if no viable solution emerges, organisations may still exchange and recombine their knowledge, facilitating future successes.
“The Netherlands is already attempting this in the recent revision of its national R&D and competiveness strategy, focused on prominent innovation domains,” explains Janssen. “Societal challenges have been identified spanning across these nine ‘Topsectors’, and integrated into their respective Knowledge and Innovation Agendas.”
‘Systemic’ innovation intermediaries for orchestrating collective R&D
Another way to encourage experts from different domains to work together is by mobilising systemic intermediaries. Such entities are known for driving sustainability transition developments, in contrast to innovation intermediaries, which help translate research findings into applications. A recent open access publication by Matthijs Janssen, Maya Bogers and Iris Wanzenböck identifies systemic innovation intermediaries, which combine these two functions.
Systemic innovation intermediaries cross geographical and cognitive distance
In the Netherlands systemic innovation intermediaries like Top Consortia for Knowledge and Innovation (TKIs) have been set up to encourage innovation in each of the nine top sectors. They encourage public-private partnership projects and coordinate research in line with the Topsector’s Knowledge and Innovation Agendas. Janssen and colleagues found that intermediaries like TKIs help organisations cross geographical and cognitive distance when setting up new collaborative R&D projects.
Overcoming the risk of groupthinking
At the same time, there are indications that pre-existing ‘social’ structures based on earlier collaborations are being reinforced. “The caveat here is that dense networks of organisations may still reinforce their existing innovation paths, rather than explore novel ones”, say Janssen, Bogers and Wanzenböck. Their follow-up research aims to shed light on which specific policy designs result in the best societal outcomes.