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

WHITE SPACES INNOVATION IN SWEDENto the notion of a design process that not only can be but has been deployed successfullyin evolving actual regional development platforms (Harmaakorpi, 2006).In the elaboration of the regional development platform model, in which Harmaakorpiparticipated in Finland, collective thinking about what moves firms and supportagencies could make into the „adjacent possible‟ occurred in diverse entrepreneur panels.These engaged in a resilience discourse process to develop path interdependence,identifying new technological trajectories they could collectively pursue. One of theselected platforms in the Lahti region was clean technology and renewable energy.Entrepreneurs and the regional Lahti Innovation Centre (a branch of Lappeenranta University)then implemented this adjacent possible, creating a new path from furnitureproduction into eco-innovation. Some 10% of Finnish cleantech business is nowadaysbased in the Lahti region, with the focus on optimising material efficiency and energyefficiency. Global leaders in the waste-to-energy concept include Lahti Energia in gasificationpower plants. Supply chain linkage of main equipment involves Metso Power,while Lahti Aqua produces district heat from biogas in its two waste water treatmentplants. Finally, the Energon Clean Energy Centre began operations in 2010, developingequipment for processing biogases, bio-oils, solar energy, solid renewable fuels andhybrid solutions, hiring out its facilities and equipment for research institutes and companies.Thus, starting from 1998, a new approach to regional innovation was heralded,informed by collective assessment of demand profiles and market opportunities. Thiscame from addressing future global „Grand Challenges‟ such as climate change, theenergy crisis, demographics and healthcare megatrends.The Knowledge FunnelAn explicit design theory for innovation at the firm level is advanced by RotmanSchool, Toronto‟s, Roger Martin. Informed by American pragmatist philosophy (Peirce,Dewey, James), Martin first emphasises the inappropriateness of scientific reasoning,based on either inductive or deductive reasoning, for organisational creativity and innovation,advancing Peirce‟s concept of „abductive reasoning‟ in preference. Unlike inductivelogic, that reasons from the specific to the general as with comparative caseanalysis (but beware the „black swan‟ problem), for example, or deductive logic thatreasons from the general to the specific (all crows are black, so the brown one is not acrow), abductive reasoning requires an evolving interaction with the environment andothers until a leap of faith, informed by metaphor or analogy can be executed to producea solution to „the mystery‟. „Abductive logic sits squarely between the past-driven worldof analytical thinking and the knowing-without-reasoning world of intuitive thinking‟(Martin, 2009, 26). This translates into decision cultures in organisations which aredivided into a past-driven „reliability‟ logic of accounting, measuring and predictabilitythat is fatal for innovation and „exploration,‟ and a „validity‟ logic that can be vulnerablebut favours „exploration‟ over „exploitation‟ of knowledge (March, 1991). Thisinclination makes it clear this position is not very far from Scharmer‟s pre-tacit „pre-87