Learning regional innovation: Scandinavian models

✍ Scribed by Marianne Ekman, Björn Gustavsen, Björn Terje Asheim, Öyvind Pålshaugen (editors)

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 313
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

While the distinction between science driven and experience driven innovation is well known and much commented on, the point that experience driven innovation demands broad participation, not only within the individual enterprise but across the whole labour market, is less well recognized. When innovation first started to attract attention, the focus was on how to create innovation. In the light of the current crisis, a new question has entered the agenda: how to create socially responsible innovation?
Participation and social responsibility in innovation are the core themes of this book. The main argument is that both are issues of organization and not of, say, ethics, or the enforcement of other forms of obligations on individual actors. The need is for a democratization of innovation that can make innovation open to broad participation, scrutiny from many positions, and influence from different interest groups without, however, losing the forward momentum.
The organization of processes that can carry forward socially responsible innovation is, in turn, dependent upon public-private co-operation. This needs, however, to be a co-operation that expresses itself in terms of joint development processes, not traditional regulation.
Combining experience driven innovation, broad participation and development oriented public-private co-operation, this book demonstrates that Scandinavia offers a unique arena of experience. It is a further argument that insofar as there is a "systems response" to the present crisis, it lies in the direction of broader diffusion of this kind of pattern.
Since the arguments of this book are built on practical experience, it does not seek to establish a set of abstract "musts" without views on implementation, but rather points at the processes that can be initiated to create movement in the right direction.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xi
Innovation, Participation and ‘Constructivist Society’....Pages 1-14
Learning, Innovation and Participation: Nordic Experiences in a Global Context with a Focus on Innovation Systems and Work Organization....Pages 15-49
The Organization of Work and Systems of Labour Market Regulation and Social Protection: A Comparison of the EU-15....Pages 50-69
Promoting Innovative Organization....Pages 70-92
Discourse and Change in Organizations....Pages 93-103
Incremental Innovations in Organizational Performance in Health Care....Pages 104-119
Research in Action: The Development of Cluster-Specific Innovation Strategies in the Oslo Region....Pages 120-149
The Initiation and Organization of Regional Innovation Processes....Pages 150-169
Proactive Labour Market Policy as a Step Towards New Regional Innovation Policy: The Case of Tampere Region....Pages 170-186
Participative Democracy and the Diffusion of Organizational Innovations: The Long, Winding Road from a Plant Level ‘Field Experiment’ to Regional Economic Development....Pages 187-205
Shared Learning Spaces as Enablers in Regional Development and Learning....Pages 206-225
Innovating Regional Co-operation between the Local and the National....Pages 226-244
Gender, Work and Innovation....Pages 245-252
Strategies to Promote Workplace Innovation: A Comparative Analysis of Nine National and Regional Approaches....Pages 253-272
Back Matter....Pages 273-300

✦ Subjects

Management; Organization; International Business; Innovation/Technology Management; Behavioral/Experimental Economics; Development Economics