Potential Roles of Technical Research Institutes for Promoting Innovation

Abstract

Over the years, policymakers and economists have acknowledged innovation as a fundamental process for national competitiveness and wealth. It has been an area of intense research and various conceptualizations have been put forward. The technological innovation systems framework was developed as an analytical tool for studying the emergence of technological innovations. While the actors typically studied using this framework are firms, the subjects of this thesis are technical research institutes. The institutes are publicly subsidized organizations that conduct research in close collaboration with industry and offer various technology services. They can therefore be expected to play an important role in the development and diffusion of technological innovations. The purpose of the thesis is to generate a typology of potential roles that the technical research institutes may adopt in technological innovation systems and to identify how they, in the different roles, promote innovation. A case study approach has been followed where three institutes have been examined on both the institute level, in order to identify the potential roles, and on the project level, in order to illustrate how they promote innovation. The result is a typology of six potential roles (advisor, matchmaker, mentor, entrepreneur, consultant and researcher) that technical research institutes may adopt for promoting innovation. It is an addition to the technological innovation systems framework, which can be used for describing and analyzing differences between institutes as well as for formulating institute strategies and policy.