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Paper info: Two rebelling approaches but only one embraced by policy – on the different embedding patterns of NIS and IMP

Title


Two rebelling approaches but only one embraced by policy – on the different embedding patterns of NIS and IMP

Authors


Magnus Eklund and
Alexandra Waluszewski
Uppsala University
Sweden
Alexandra Waluszewski

Place of Publication


The paper was published at the 32nd IMP-conference in Poznan, Poland in 2016.

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Abstract


Two rebelling schools directed in the late 70s and early 80s a heavy critique towards neoclassic economic theory and its omnipresence in models available for understanding change in the economic landscape. 40 years later one of the rebels, the National Innovation System approach (NIS) has turned into the perhaps most utilised models in OECD and EU policy circles. The other is 40 years later still a rare exception in OECD and EU policy circles. The IMP network approach has even lost the position it once had in at least one national policy context. From 1980 and until the mid-1990s IMP researchers were recurrently engaged by The Swedish National Board for Technological Development: among others for analysis of specific industrial areas and for evaluations of policy measures. The aim of this paper is to sketch a first draft at an explanation of the difference in policy success between IMP and NIS, by discussing the compatibility between the two schools and the needs and preferences of the international policy context, as well as the domestic Swedish setting. First, we study a selection of the seminal texts of the two approaches in order to identify their basic theoretical assumptions, giving us one part of the raw material needed to discuss on the variety of policy success. Second, we present an empirical illustration of how the IMP and the NIS approach have been embedded in the Swedish national policy setting: with STU/NUTEK and Vinnova as focal policy actors, based on two published historical studies: presented in History of Technology respectively Economic History. In the concluding discussion, we discuss if IMP: using its theoretical framework, could predict its own relative policy failure.