A special issue of International Journal of Technology, Policy and Management
Innovation is increasingly acknowledged as essential for value creation in modern economic systems, and the role of innovation management may be seen as a strategically important catalyst affecting future growth. Up to the mid-1990s, a linear supply-driven view of the innovation process prevailed, according to which reinforcing the scientific and technological resources of a region would automatically generate economic growth. The rationale behind policy intervention was the "market failure argument", where there is a need to support investment in knowledge which would otherwise be under-funded by the private sector because of the public good nature of the output and excessive risks associated to these kind of investments.
However, in the last decade, theoretical thinking has evolved from a linear understanding of the innovation process, where scientific advances stem from the knowledge-producing sector and are progressively transferred to the economic sector, to a more interactive vision, accepting the idea of an open view of the firm’s environment, where innovation arises from complex feedback loops between the market place and the firm, between various units of firms, between the firm and the sources of knowledge, emphasizing the concept of a "regional innovation system" that shifts the focus from the production system to the institutional system of a geographical area.
This new paradigm has required a radical change in the design of the measures, programmes and policies supporting the innovation process. Henceforth, over the last decade, together with the traditional policies and programmes devoted to the upgrading and creation of RTD capacities, and the fostering of technology transfer centres and mechanisms in order to facilitate the process of industrial absorption of technologies created in the academic or public research laboratory, the innovation supporting framework has evolved into a multipurpose, multi-actor policy tool, with a more horizontal focus of its objectives.
Such a change in policy emphasis implies a corresponding change in the evaluation methodology, as the 'traditional' mode of evaluation of one single instrument, based on control and audit concepts, which addresses multiple participants may be insufficient to assess its contribution to innovation capability building and the innovation performance of the individual actors. Differently from the evaluation of the R&D programmes, which is relatively easy to conduct because of the fairly small range of R&D policy instruments that are usually pursued and the similarly limited range of impacts that are typically looked for (i.e., publications, citations, scientific prestige, number of patents), innovation programmes aimed at supporting the systemic and highly decentralised nature of innovation come in many forms, in contrast, and the impacts on industrial performance are similarly diverse. In this new framework, evaluations should be integrated in the planning of a policy measure to be effective and a clear evaluation strategy should be in place at the planning phase of the policy measures design.
This special issue will provide an international forum for academics, practitioners, and policy makers to investigate, exchange novel ideas and disseminate knowledge covering the broad area of innovation programme and policy evaluation. Experts and professionals from academia, industry, government and the public sector are invited to submit papers on their recent research and professional experience on the subject. Interdisciplinary research is also encouraged.
Papers dealing with (but not limited to) any of the following themes are appropriate for consideration:
- The changing role of the evaluator
- Best practices in the application of innovation programmes and policy formulation evaluation
- Impact assessment measures and methods
- Types of evaluation processes
- Evaluation of local and national systems of innovation
- Evaluation of innovation policies as a learning process
- Old vs new practices of innovation policy evaluation
- Measuring the quality of innovation policies
- Implementing and managing the evaluation process
- Scoping the evaluation of an innovation programme
- Peer-reviewing of evaluation practices
- Impact modelling and the design of measurable impact indicators
- Tools, concepts, and good practices in the evaluation of innovation
- How to measure innovation capability building
- Evaluation as a policy tool
- Advanced evaluation techniques and methodologies
- Quantitative and qualitative evaluation approaches
- Case studies using good evaluation practices or exemplar projects of innovation policy evaluation projects
Important Dates
Submission of papers: 1 February, 2008
Feedback to authors: 1 April, 2008
Final paper due: 1 June, 2008
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