International Workshop:

The Governance of Innovation and Socio-technical Systems: Theorising and Explaining Change

‘Governance’ is a notion that has gained increasing currency the past years in the field of (sectoral) innovation systems and socio-technical systems’ studies. Generally speaking, it refers to the ability of a society to solve collective action problems in issues that involve science, technology and innovation. However, there continues to be a lack in academic literature regarding governance in system's change.  Firstly, because the empirical literature on systems exhibits multiple understanding of change, and hence about how governance processes take place. This diversity has not been properly spelled out, obscuring the way in which change is linked to specific forms of (effective) governance. And secondly, because these empirical studies tend to use the notion ‘governance’ in rather loose conceptual terms and sometimes even only implicitly. This tends to underestimate or ignore the coordination aspect embedded in any form of systemic change. For these two reasons, the actual explanatory capacity of the notion ‘governance’ when studying systems’ change remains limited.

 The two day workshop aims at addressing this gap in the literature, asking how do agents and institutions coordinate in the process of generating change in complex socio-technical and (sectoral) innovation systems. Therefore 30 distinguished scholars from the EU and North America will gather to approach and advance these questions.

The workshop is arranged by the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence and the Department of Business at the Copenhagen Business School, in collaboration with FUHU, Denmark and LUCIE (Lund University).