Emergence of societal challenges-based innovation policies in market-based innovation systems: lessons from Estonia

Abstract

The societal challenges based approach to STI policy is currently one of the key ways the EU seeks to break away from the linear and since-push driven policy thinking. This seems to raise complex challenges of policy legitimization, rationalization and institutionalization especially in countries that have tried to build market-based innovation systems. Based on the case study of Estonia, we show that in addition to developing new policy mixes and coordination instruments, such policy shift may also require rethinking of core STI policy rationales and legitimization practices; and these may have to be further supported by experimental policy approaches and institutional innovations for changing the habits and routines of key STI system actors.

Technology transfer in economic periphery: Emerging patterns and policy challenges

“…This approach, however, did not always allow these countries to tackle the main problems they faced (Suurna & Kattel, 2010). As the technology-transfer policies in the "West" tend to focus on developing different intermediary institutions and on the direct and formal economic benefits of technology transfer (Bozeman et al, 2014), the congruence of supply and demand conditions has proven to be particularly problematic in the current policy-learning context of CEE (Karo & Lember, 2016). This explains, in turn, why the issues of basic capacity-building and broader impact and public value have received only limited attention.…”

“…The challenges the CEE countries are facing are exacerbated by the fact that these countries have not only suffered from the simplified reaction to the “European Paradox”, but also from the “copying paradox” through the excessive Europeanization of policies, instruments, and organizational solutions (Izsak et al, 2014; Karo & Kattel, 2010; Suurna & Kattel, 2010). The Estonian innovation system and its policies have consequently largely followed the linear approach to innovation (Karo & Lember, 2016) which centers the role of academic R&D in innovation processes, among other developments. Since the field of biotechnology—as a science‐based sector (see Pavitt, 1984)—epitomizes this policy logic, this paper uses it as a critical case study for the evolution of the role of academic R&D in peripheral innovation systems.…”

Exploração de novos conceitos em política de inovação

“…Although the roots of mission policies go back to the second postwar period, usually linked to defense objectives, in recent years they have been reconsidered as an effective perspective to mobilize resources to face new societal challenges such as climate change and population ageing (Mazzucato, 2015 andMowery, 2013;Foray et al, 2012;UNCTAD, 2017;Karo and Lember, 2016;Coenen et al, 2015). In this new context, old definitions such as Ergas' ( 1987), which make a distinction between missionoriented policies and diffusion-oriented ones, have been taken and reformulated under a new concept of policies in which non-neutrality, direct intervention and demand instruments are revalued to cope with increasing international technological competition.…”

Structuring Effect of the EU Framework Programmes in Estonia? The Case of Sociology

“…While national research policy reforms were conducted for facilitating the access to the EU funding sources, the EU policy also structured the local policy objectives and organizational set-up in a specific way. For example, local authors have pointed out the lack of "EU policy systems" logic in Estonian policy mix-such as private sector R&D specialization or a socioeconomically relevant public R&D system (Karo, Kattel, Raudla, 2016;Karo, Lember, 2016). From their side, authors concentrated on university research have argued that similarly to some other CEE region countries, in the context of promoting EU funding opportunities and using structural funding within the highly competitive funding system, the development of the SSH and particularly social sciences as strategic scientific field has remained in the background during the formation of these policies (Virtasalo, Järvinen, 2010).…”