A plethora of transformative innovation policy tensions

ABSTRACT

The grand challenges and regional restructuring have elevated the need for innovation policy to focus on those factors hindering or slowing sustainable transformation. Promoting regional restructuring requires a well resourced transformative innovation policy (TIP), but its agenda is not yet well defined, nor are its processes, from agenda-setting to implementation, fully discussed. This chapter argues that identifying the tensions embedded in any effort to transform societies and regions is central. Although the vision of green and clean economies has been widely accepted, uncertainty about the potentially changing social positions of key actors and diverging future opportunities cause tensions, hindering the implementation of policies and locking regions into the past. The main aim of this chapter is to open a horizon to tensions in TIP and regional restructuring.

KEYWORDS: transformation, innovation, policy, tension, region, restructuring