LIST OF WORKSHOPS

Incentives for innovation and the formation of innovation clusters are among the key mechanisms to shape future economic development and contribute to technological renewal. Innovation does not simply arise from free competition in markets but is significantly influenced by public institutions and the governance structures. The last decade’s evolution of innovation policy from a list of individual policy components, such as research funding or technology policy, to a comprehensive innovation system (cf. Gerybadze (2015): 517) has made coordination to a key feature of innovation policy. Second, it has created a close coupling of innovation and standardization policy. Standardization policy, which describes the process of regulating the status “normal”, leads to a shift in the governance structure towards market participants, who contribute significantly to the design of “their” markets and innovation spaces. The recent complaint of Tesla-CEO Elon Musk about the hurdles of German regulation may show these differences in the self-perception of a corporate’s role when developing national innovation systems. Additionally, it reveals the close relationship between innovation and standardization policies and differences in governance, regulation and cultures. Especially in the field of innovation policy, it becomes apparent that the entrepreneurial understanding of political decision-making follows the substantive ideas of innovation as an agile, efficient and innovative process.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers from the fields of policy studies and political economy, working on the promotion, regulation, and standardization of emerging technologies. The workshop will operate on a comparative basis and is methodical open to all kinds of research, including qualitative and quantitative studies as well as mixed-method approaches. This contains, for example, research on the comparison of innovation clusters, governance characteristics, policy designs, politics or policy impact assessments as well as simulations on technology development, actor behavior, market effects, or sectorial and regional specifics.

In order to generate hypotheses that could be discussed in the context of the workshop, a brief overview of the state of the art, as well as classifying theory, will follow. Research on emerging technologies offers an institutional approach, which analyses the correlations between institutional regulation and economic effects. Institutions set the basic framework for economic activity and thus provide incentives for the behavior of individuals. Institutional governance can improve the framework conditions for innovation and thus offer an additional approach to supply and demand policy. Current empirical research on this topic deals, for example, with risk and liability requirements or patent law requirements. (cf. Gerybadze (2015), Pittinsky (2019). The institutional perspective also offers added value with regard to the interactions between innovation and standardization policy.

The promotion of innovation plays an important role to create interfaces and communication standards on markets that improve networking and enable technology development. In addition to political framework conditions that promote the economy, ranging from the education sector to financing, standardization enables market participants to participate in the development process of institutions. Although standards as "best-practice rules based on expertise" (Kerwer (2005): 628) initially have no legal binding force (cf. Brunsson, Jacobsson (2000a), they have evolved into decisive market rules for emerging technologies. Standardization, therefore, goes hand in hand with homogenization, normalization (cf. Henman, Dean (2010): 79) isomorphism (cf. DiMaggio, Powell (1983): 149), and uniformity (cf. Brunsson (2000): 138ff) of emerging markets. The regulatory basis for the European market is set by EU 1025/2012 with the intention to harmonize the market and increase securities – an empirical evaluation of this regulation in research is currently missing. For the output evaluation of institutional regulations commonly Patents and R&D investments are used as indicators (cf. Nagaoka et al. (2010); limits in: cf. Feldman, Kogler (2010): 385), other econometric approaches work with infrastructure quality, ISO certifications, capital circulation or research networks. This leaves a number of unanswered questions for the workshop. Does the increase in regulations, for example in the areas of environmental protection or liability requirements, have an impact on innovation activity? How does standardization affect the behavior of individual market participants? Is institutional regulation an obstacle with regard to cross-sectorial technology share or the cooperative behavior of SMEs?

The governance perspective in research analyses innovation policy with regard to actor constellation and coordination (interactive innovation modeling). This approach makes it possible to evaluate the agile process of developing policy measures in correlation to market effects. Governance aspects and organizational issues play a role in all policy fields relevant to innovation policy. (add. info: cf. Elstub, Escobar (2019); Fritzsche, A. et al. (2020)).

The creation and enforcement of innovation agencies and policy objectives shape the innovation process in a significant way with regard to actor constellation, power distribution and working processes in the governance structure. This includes structural questions, such as aspects of participation or balance of interests, as well as procedural characteristics of the decision making process, like efficiency, agility or innovation. This links to studies on policy agenda setting and shows how policy instruments can be used to steer the innovation process. In this understanding, the politics dimension is centrally linked to the quality of policy output and outcome. A relation between governance aspects and innovation policy which gets mapped, for example, in research on coordination quality. One theoretical example is the concept of General Purpose Technologies, linking growth areas and emerging technologies in heterogenic sectors. This approach evaluates the mechanisms, which allow cost-intensive innovations to be shared over different sectors and processes. (cf. Bresnahan (2010): 763-767) The quality of coordination is therefore a key measure for the quality of innovation. Empirical studies also examine the quality of inter-firm cooperation, interaction with research institutes, government funding, etc. (cf. Freeman, Luca (2001)).

In the field of standardization policy, research studies work on the cleavage between public and private sector (cf. Borraz (2007): 80), governance defects such as unequal representation or lobbyism, and empowerment effects as an influencing factor on the market structure (cf. Henman, Dean (2010): 77). There are several case studies concerning governance effects on innovation in international product markets (overview in: Loconto, Bush (2010): 509; add. Info: Yates, Murphy (2019)), but a gap with respect to the comparative analysis of national governance structures in emerging markets. This leaves a number of unanswered questions for the workshop. Why is the creation of innovation spaces so hesitant? How could cross-border coordination be better designed – especially with a view to innovations by SMEs? What role does the national mindset play in standardization bodies?

The functionalistic approach in comparative policy research enables the analysis of innovation policy in terms of adopting a measure as a solution to a concrete problem. This provides a comparative basis for the policy making processes, including all procedural steps from identification to formulation, decision-making, implementation, evaluation and reviewing of policy measures. The comparison of innovation policy therefore enables a qualitative assessment at all these steps, which can be causal for the output and outcome generated. This may emphasise, why the existing innovation clusters and conditions are a decisive criterion for the quality of innovation policy. And it proofs, that distinctions of economics of innovation, such as geographical or sectorial conditions, are relevant for the policy making process. If, for example, venture capital for start-up funding is lacking, an increase in government funding could be an appropriate policy measure. Due to the large number of potential measures, finding the most efficient solution by comparative approaches offers added value, as it allows an empirical categorization of policies. (cf. Sørensen (2017); Hervas-Oliver et al. (2021)) Institutional regulation can also be part of this category if market participants in a technical committee decide to define certain product standards in order to improve the efficiency of inter-firm cooperation. A well-known model in environmental policy is e.g. Porter's Hypothesis, which analyses an innovation model in economic policy (cf. Kolloch & Golker (2016)).

With a view to the workshop, there is plenty of scope for research questions. This includes comparisons of different national innovation policy measures, individual case analyses, historical development lines, input-output models, etc.

Literature:

Borraz, O. (2007). ‘Governing Standards: The Rise of Standardization Processes in France and the EU’, Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions, 20(1), 57-84.

Bresnahan, T. (2010). General purpose technologies. In: H. B. Hall & N. Rosenberg, Handbook of the economics of innovation. Vol. 2, Oxford: Elsevier, 761-791.

Brunsson, N., Jacobsson, B. (2000). A world of standards. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brunsson, N., Jacobsson, B. (2000a). The Contemporary expansion of Standardisation. In: N. Brunsson, B. Jacobsson. A world of standards. Oxford, 1-20.

Brunsson, N. (2000). Standardization and Uniformity. In: Brunsson, N., Jacobsson, B. (2000). A world of standards. Oxford, 138-150.

DiMaggio, P., Powell, W. (1983). The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. American Sociological Review, 48(2), 147-160.

Elstub, S., Escobar, O. (2019). Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance. 10.4337/9781786433862.

Feldmann, M. P., Kogler, D. F. (2010). Stylized facts in the geography of innovation. In: H. B. Hall & N. Rosenberg, Handbook of the economics of innovation. Vol. 1, Oxford: Elsevier, 381-427.

Fritzsche, A. et al. (2020). Innovating in the Open Lab: The new potential for interactive value creation across organizational boundaries, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

Freeman, C., Louca, F. (2001). As Time Goes By: The Information Revolution and the Industrial Revolutions in Historical Perspective. Oxford: University Press.

Gerybadze, A. (2015). Instrumente der Innovationspolitik. Auf dem Weg zu einer neuen Industriepolitik?, WSI Mitteilungen, 7. 516-525.

Henman, P., Dean, M. (2010). E-Government and the Production of Standardized Individuality. In: V. Higgins, W. Larner. s. Macmillan, Basingstoke, 77-94.

Hervas-Oliver, J.-L. et al. (2021). Emerging regional innovation policies for industry 4.0: Analyzing the digital innovation hub program in European regions, Competitiveness Review, 31(1), 106-129. https://doi.org/10.1108/CR-12-2019-0159.

Kerwer, D. (2005). ‘Rules that Many Use: Standards and Global Regulation’, Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions, 18(4), 611-32.

Kolloch, M., Golker, O. (2016). Staatliche Regulierung und Digitalisierung als Antezedenzien für Innovationen in der Energiewirtschaft am Beispiel von REMIT. Zeitschrift für Energiewirtschaft, 40, 41-54.

Loconto, A., Busch, L. (2010). Standards, techno-economic networks, and playing fields: Performing the global market economy. Review of International Political Economy, 17(3), 507-536.

Nagaoka, S., Motohashi, K., Goto, A. (2010). Patent Statistics as an innovation indicator. In: H. B. Hall & N. Rosenberg, Handbook of the economics of innovation. Vol. 2, Oxford: Elsevier, 1083-1127.

Pittinsky, T. (Ed.). (2019). Science, Technology, and Society: New Perspectives and Directions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sørensen, E. (2017) Political innovations: innovations in political institutions, processes and outputs, Public Management Review, 19(1), 1-19.

Yates, J., Murphy, C. N. (2019). Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

We welcome contributions that address theoretical, methodological, and empirical research questions on the promotion, regulation, and standardization of emerging technologies. The workshop aims to develop a comparative perspective on innovation at the intersection of policy studies and political economy. Our main intention is to show, how innovation can be promoted and regulated and how standardization can be used to support this process.

For this reason, contributions are welcome, that work on one or at the intersection between the three leading topics “promotion”, “regulation” and “standardization”. The promotion of innovation plays an important role in creating interfaces and communication standards on markets that improve networking, enable technology development, and enhance the quality of coordination. The promotion of innovation is there for closely linked to the institutions, which set the framework for economic activity and provide incentives for the innovative behavior of individuals. In addition to the basic institutional framework, standardization enables market participants to join the development process of market rules and processes. In this way, market actors in turn play a decisive role in the governance structure, which can provide a strong impetus for the development of emerging technologies.

As mentioned above policy processes are key to understanding policy decisions for the promotion, regulation and standardization of emerging technologies. Therefore, studies focussing on the link between innovation politics and policy outputs and outcomes are very welcome.

The workshop is methodical open to all kinds of research, including qualitative and quantitative studies as well as mixed-method approaches. The theoretical design can take on institutional, governance, or functionalistic assumptions. As we expect a high variance of different topics and studies, it’s intended to publish this workshop's unique combination of different research approaches in form of an edited book.

Possible research questions or approaches could work on: Correlations between institutional design and emerging technologies; Regulation and cross-sectorial technology share; Behavioural economic effects on competition and R&D-cooperation; Innovations cluster and innovations spaces; Comparisons of innovation policy systems; Individual case studies; Governance characteristics or policy impact assessments; Sectorial and regional macroeconomic policy studies

Incentives for innovation and the formation of emerging clusters are among the key mechanisms to shape future economic development and contribute to technological renewal. The last decade’s evolution of innovation policy from a list of individual policy components such as research funding or technology policy to a comprehensive innovation system (Cf. Gerybadze (2015): 517) has made coordination to the key feature of innovation policy. Second, it has created a close coupling of innovation and standardization policy, which regulates the status “normal” and enforces market participants to contribute in the design-process of “their” markets. The recent complaint of Tesla-CEO Elon Musk about the hurdles of German regulation may show these differences in the self-perception of a corporates role and processes of policy making when developing national innovation systems.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together research from the fields of policy studies and political economy, working on the promotion, regulation and standardization of emerging technologies. The workshop is open to all types of theory designs, following institutional, governance and functionalistic assumptions.

Institutional approaches set the focus on the correlations between institutions and behavioural changes, which cause innovation effects. A connection to current research is provided by studies working on risk, liability or patent law requirements (cf. Gerybadze (2015), Pittinsky (2019)); output-evaluation via patents and R&D investments (cf. Nagaoka et al. (2010)), infrastructure quality, ISO certifications, capital circulation or research networks. The governance perspective analyses innovation policy with regard to structural and procedural aspects of the implemented decision making process, chosen institutional settings (e.g. actor constellation) and policy objectives; e.g. focusing on actor constellation or coordination quality (interactive innovation modelling). This includes a variety of policy fields (cf. Elstub, Escobar (2019); Fritzsche, A. et al. (2020)), technology distribution models (cf. Bresnahan (2010)), inter-firm cooperation, cluster development, research and government funding (cf. Freeman, Luca (2001)) as well as standardization effects (cf. Borraz (2007), Henman, Dean (2010)). It also links innovation politics with policy outputs and outcomes. The functionalistic approach enables the policy evaluation with respect to its problem-solving capacity (cf. Sørensen, E. (2017); Hervas-Oliver et al. (2021)); that offers scope for comparative approaches, case studies, policy design comparison etc.

Hanna Hottenrott is professor of Economics of Innovation at the Department of Economics & Policy of the School of Management at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Her research examines questions related to the economics of innovation as well as the economics of science and technological change from the perspective of industrial economics and applied micro-economics.  Recent work focuses on innovation and science policy and its effectiveness.

She joined TUM from the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) where she was an assistant professor from 2013-2016. She holds an advanced degree in economics from the University of Heidelberg and obtained a PhD in economics from KU Leuven in 2010. After graduating she was awarded a fellowship by the Flemish Science Foundation (FWO) to investigate questions in the fields of innovation policy. Since 2008 she is research associate at the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and she is also a member of the scientific advisory board of the Leibniz Center for Science and Society (LCSS) as well as a member of the advisory board for innovation surveys in Germany.

Selected publications:

Berger, Marius; Hottenrott, Hanna: Public Subsidies and the Sources of Venture Capital. Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 16, 2021, e00272.

Heyard, Rachel; Hottenrott, Hanna: The Value of Research Funding for Knowledge Creation and Dissemination: A study of SNSF Research Grants. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8, 2021, 217.

Hanna Hottenrott, Michael E. Rose, Cornelia Lawson: The Rise of Multiple Institutional Affiliations in Academia. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 72 (8), 2021, 1039-1058.

Hottenrott, Hanna; Richstein, Robert: Start-up subsidies: Does the policy instrument matter? Research Policy 49 (1), 2020, 103888.

Hottenrott, Hanna; Lopes-Bento, Cindy; Veugelers, Reinhilde: Direct and Cross-Scheme Effects in a Research and Development Subsidy Program. Research Policy 46 (6), 2017, 1118-1132 

Stefan Wurster is professor for policy analysis at the Department of Governance of the School of Social Sciences and Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He conducts research on policy analysis in areas closely linked to sustainability such as education, research, innovation, environmental policy and energy policy. His specific research interests include the comparison of democracies and autocracies as well as different instruments of policy regulation.

In 2010 he was awarded a PhD with distinction (summa cum laude). From 2009 to 2015 he was a research associate in Heidelberg. From 2012 to 2015 he coordinated a doctoral study program on the “Performance of Politics in Autocratic and Democratic Regimes” and from 2015 to 2016 he worked as an assistant professor at the University of Trier. Since 2016 he is professor of policy analysis at the Technical University of Munich.

Selected publications:

Wurster, Stefan; Steffen J. Schlosser: Sovereign Wealth Funds as Sustainability Instruments? Disclosure of Sustainability Criteria in Worldwide Comparison. Sustainability 13, 2021, 5565. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13105565.

Wurster, Stefan; Christian Hagemann: The Expansion of Renewable Energy in Federal Settings: Austria, Belgium and Germany in Comparison. Journal of Environment and Development, 29(1): 2020, 147-168. https://doi.org/10.1177/1070496519887488.

Hörisch, Felix; Stefan Wurster: The Policies of the First Green-Red Government in the German Federal State of Baden-Württemberg, 2011–2016 A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Different Policy Sectors. Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 60(3), 2019, 513–538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11615-019-00170-0.

Wurster, Stefan; Christian Hagemann: Two Ways to Success: Expansion of Renewable Energies in Comparison Between Germany’s Federal States. Energy Policy, 119, 2018, 610-619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.04.059.

Wurster, Stefan; Wolf, Frieder: Die Arbeitsteilung in der F&E-Politik und ihre Performanzwirkung. Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft (ZfVP), 5(2), 2011, 225-252. (http://www.vsjournals.de/index.php;do=show_article/sid=21714440750e46c4e9c3d b050060593/site=zfvp/area =pol/id=9474)

Wurster, Stefan: Zukunftsvorsorge in Deutschland - Ein Vergleich der Bildungs-, Forschungs-, Umwelt-, und Energiepolitik. 2010, Baden-Baden.

Jona van Laak is a lecturer for economics at the FOM University of Applied Sciences and the Technical University of Ulm and a research fellow at the KCE KompetenzCenter for Entrepreneurship & SME studies in Essen. After studying political science and economics at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, he completed his doctorate in crisis research at Technical University Munich. Professionally, he has been working as a business editor and analyst for specialist publishers in the IT and construction industry since 2017. His current research focuses on Innovation in the SME sector, with a spotlight on industry and craft sector as well as European standardization policy.

Selected publications:

Van Laak, Jona; Vatanparast, Farid: Systemanbieter im Handwerk. Chancen und Risiken für das Innovationspotenzial von KMU am Beispiel des Metallbaus. in: Chlosta, S. / Wassermann, H. / Vatanparast, F. (Hrsg.) KCE Schriftenreihe der FOM, 6, 2021.

Van Laak, Jona; Vatanparast, Farid: Die Corona-Pandemie als ordnungsökonomische Herausforderung und Beschleuniger von Change-Prozessen im Mittelstand. in: Chlosta, S. / Wassermann, H. / Vatanparast, F. (Hrsg.) KCE Schriftenreihe der FOM, 4, 2021.

Van Laak, Jona: #Scotland is open. Die Wirkungen medialen Campaigning bei Sezessionsbestrebungen, in: G. Mann u.a.: Desintegration der Staatenwelt im 21. Jahrhundert?. Springer, 2020.

Van Laak, Jona: Souveränität in Zeiten der Krise. Theoretische Betrachtungen des Ausnahmezustands im 21. Jahrhundert. Springer, 2019.

Steinmüller, Heinz; Van Laak, Jona: The International Financial Crisis and its Effects on Economy, in: H. Bergbauer: Cooperation in Asia and Disintegration in Europe?, 148-164, Nomos, 2016