White Spaces Innovation in Sweden - Innovation policy for ... - Vinnova

WHITE SPACES INNOVATION IN SWEDEN3 Resilience, Innovative ‘WhiteSpaces’ & Cluster-Platforms inSwedish Regions3.1 IntroductionConfiguring the previous scene-setting exercise, we are convinced that the newest andmost fruitful insights into our understanding of innovation processes come where understandingis informed by one of four complementary theoretical perspectives. These are,respectively: the Multi-level Perspective on Co-evolution (MLP); the Resilience orPanarchy perspective; Complexity Theory; and Evolutionary Economic Geography(EEG). These are eventually combined into a new synthesis to assist advanced understandingof the role of transversality and proximity in contemporary innovationprocesses (Fig. 3.3).To recap, the multi-level perspective (MLP) on co-evolutionarytransition is a comparatively simple but nevertheless useful perspective from the Netherlandsaddressed principally at the eco-innovation sphere where some thirty-two industrialsub-fields were selected for special attention in relation to their eco-innovationpotential. Policy-makers worked over a number of years with eco- innovation academicsto develop a three-tier macro-perspective on transition and the co-evolution of sociopoliticaland economic sub- systems (socio-technical systems; STS) that define theneeds driving eco-innovation (see, for example, Kemp, 2002; Geels, 2004; 2006). Oneof the important observations is that the challenge posed by the need to control humancentredglobal warming demands innovation of a far higher systems order than anypreceding „technological paradigm‟ in the world‟s industrial history (Fig.3.1). This isbecause all preceding „long waves‟ of transformative, radical technological innovationfrom mechanisation through the railroadisation, electrification, motorisation, and informatisationparadigms of global society, occurred under a macro-regime or „landscape‟of reliance upon fossil fuels. Now the macro-regime and whatever future technologicalparadigms emerge over time in the future should be set in a „post-hydrocarbon landscape‟.Related to MLP is a richer and more integrated nature-society perspective on coevolutionarytransition known as „Panarchy‟ or the „Resilience‟ approach (Gunderson &Holling, 2002; Folke, 2006). Panarchy is a framework to account for the dual characteristicsof all complex adaptive systems – stability and change. It shows how economicgrowth and human development depend on ecosystems and institutions, and how theyinteract. It arose from observation of failed attempts to manage regional ecosystems that34