LIST OF PANELS

‘Innovation’ is a trending concept among entrepreneurs and policymakers alike, particularly given the complex problems governments are facing today. However, how do governments actually think about and enact innovation policy that supports science, engineering, and technological advancements? When addressing complex challenges such as climate change, sustainable urban development, or the fourth industrial revolution, how do governments design policies and organise their activity to encourage the adoption of technologies such as renewable energy, smart transport, or the Internet of Things, while also mitigating the (unintended) socio-economic consequences of these disruptive innovations? Taking into account that the socio-technical dimension of innovation includes a large variety of stakeholders, who do governments engage with closely to ensure that innovation strategies are achieved in order to support a responsible adoption of disruptive technologies, furthering public value? Governments have a set of tools at hand to guide innovation (e.g. innovation agencies, delivery units, policy mixes, etc.), yet which instruments and mechanisms are the most successful ones to address these complex issues? Hence, the central question on which this panel will focus is how innovation policy is governed to support desired engineering, scientific, and technological advancements.

Innovation policy has most often been studied by looking at questions of policy design that define the overall principles of governance towards socio-technological advancements. However, the way complex problems need to be tackled differs from past experiences, as the state and its policies are developing into a central node in the innovation network (Mazzucato 2017). Similarly, the way public administration scholars have investigated governance challenges, in general, and innovation policy, in particular, can be intensified by looking at the complex policy problems that socio-technical innovations as responses to wicked problems pose today, for instance regarding connected autonomous vehicles (Brass et al. 2017) or the Internet of Things (Brass 2018). Organising innovation, i.e. implementing innovation policies, also demands an understanding of the topology of innovation networks and the challenges that come with it, such as the coordination of stakeholders, also beyond public agencies (Peters 2015, Bouckaert et al. 2010, Braun 2008, Alexander 1993), coordination and innovation within the public sector itself (Pollitt 2003, Christensen & Leagreid 2007, de Vries et al. 2016, Bekkers et al. 2011, Karo & Kattel 2018), or the deployment of particular mechanisms and instruments (Smits & Kuhlmann 2004, Howlett et al. 2006). By addressing these challenges of both design and organisation of innovation policies that have the ambition to bring new technologies into established areas, the panel aims at highlighting best practice and suboptimal examples from which we can learn. In turn, a part of this endeavour also aims at understanding the boundaries of innovation policy, i.e. addressing the challenges innovation policy and its organisation face.

Bibliography:

• Alexander, E.R. (1993). Interorganizational Coordination: Theory and Practice. Journal of Planning Literature, 7(4), 328-340.
• Bekkers, V., Edelenbos, J. & Steijn, B. (2011). Innovation in the Public Sector. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
• Bouckaert G., Peters, G. & Verhoest K. (2010). The Coordination of Public Sector Organizations. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
• Brass, I.C., Carr, M., Tanczer, L., Maple, C. & Blackstock J. (2017). Unbundling the Emerging Cyber-Physical Risks in Connected and Autonomous Vehicles. In Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: The Emerging Legal Challenges. London, UK: Pinsent Masons.
• Brass, I.C. (2018). Standardising IoT Security: Implications for Digital Forensics. Digital Forensics Magazine 35, 44-48.
• Braun, D. (2008). Organising the Political Coordination of Knowledge and Innvoation Policies. Science and Public Policy, 35(4), 227-239.
• Christensen, T. & Lægreid, P. (2007). The Whole-of-Government Approach to Public Sector Reform. Public Administration Review, 67(6), 1059-1066.
• De Vries, H., Bekkers, V., & Tummers, L. (2016). Innovation in the Public Sector: A Systematic Review and Future Research Agenda. Public Administration, 94(1), 146-166.
• Howlett, M., Kim, J. & Weaver, P. (2006). Assessing Instrument Mixes through Program- and Agency-Level Data: Methodological Issues in Contemporary Implementation Research. Review of Policy Research, 23(1), 129-151.
• Karo, E. & Kattel, R. (2018). Innovation and the State: Towards an Evolutionary Theory of Policy Capacity. In X. Wu, M. Howlett, & M. Ramesh (Eds.), Policy Capacity and Governance (pp. 123–150). Cham, CH: Palgrave.
• Mazzucato, M. (2017). Mission-Oriented Innovation Policy: Challenges and Opportunities (Working Paper No. 2017–01). London, UK: UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
• Peters, B. G. (2015). Pursuing Horizontal Management: The Politics of Public Sector Coordination. Lawrence, USA: University Press of Kansas.
• Pollitt, C. (2003). Joined-up Government: a Survey. Political Studies Review, 1, 34-49.
• Smits, R. & Kuhlmann, S. (2004). The Rise oif Systemic Instruments in Innovation Policy. International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy 1(1), 4-32.

The panel explores the questions, dynamics, and challenges related to governing emerging technologies and innovation empirically and by doing so contributes to furthering scholarship at the intersection of public policy, public administration, and innovation studies. This includes the design and the organisation of innovation policies and the challenges arising from them, such as coordination challenges, public sector innovation, or mechanisms and instruments for innovation policy, geared towards answering the question of how innovation policy is governed to support desired engineering, scientific, and technological advancements.

Our panel proposes the following questions, which arise from the challenges outlined above at the intersection of public administration, governance, and innovation studies:

• How do innovation networks look like and what role does governance play?
• What are possible approaches to governing innovation and its knock-on effects across socio-technical systems and how are successful policies designed? (e.g. through innovation agencies, delivery units, etc.)
• How can we measure performance of innovation policies and, hence, determine successful approaches?
• What are underlying coordination challenges across emerging innovation networks and how can they be governed?
• What are best practice examples for governing innovation networks?
• To what extent does innovation policy differ across sectors and technologies and what can we learn from these differences?
• What are the limits and boundaries to governing socio-technical innovation through innovation policy?
• Can we learn from other policy areas when designing and organising innovation policy?

Papers submitted to this panel will contribute to a better understanding of these challenges and will, therefore, investigate these questions empirically from various distinct angles regarding policy design, organisation, and best practise examples, both qualitatively and quantitatively. We warmly invite papers on one (or more) of the following topics:

• Innovation of complex socio-technical systems
• Governing socio-technical systems
• Multi-technology challenges
• Implementing and organising innovation policy
• Organisational challenges to innovation policy
• Measuring and evaluating innovation for science, engineering, and technological advancements
• Best practice examples of innovation policy design and organisation for science, engineering, and technological advancements

For further questions, contact Andreas Kopp or Irina Brass at UCL STEaPP.