Do winners pick government? How scale-up experience shapes entrepreneurs’ assessments of innovation policy mixes

Steven Denney, Travis Southin and David A Wolfe

Science and Public Policy, 2023, vol. 50, issue 5, 858-870

Abstract: How do entrepreneurs of high-growth firms in small, open economies evaluate innovation policy mixes? In response to market consolidation by large firms, governments in such countries are using a mix of innovation policy tools to support firms with high-growth potential in digitally intensive sectors. Government objectives, however, are not being realized. Bringing actor-centric perspectives to the policy mix literature, we analyze interviews with entrepreneurs from Canadian technology firms to determine whether there is a disconnect between the objectives and instruments employed by the government. With distinct policy preferences rooted in their growth experiences specific to the country’s political economy, we find that scale-up entrepreneurs prefer a more active role of the government in the form of demand-side, direct, and targeted innovation instruments. The findings presented in this article provide a more nuanced understanding of the innovation policy landscape and the preferences of technology scale-up firms

Keywords: scale-up firms; policy mixes; policy preferences; innovation policy; entreprenuership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/scipol/scad030 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:scippl:v:50:y:2023:i:5:p:858-870.

Access Statistics for this article

Science and Public Policy is currently edited by Nicoletta Corrocher, Jeong-Dong Lee, Mireille Matt and Nicholas Vonortas

More articles in Science and Public Policy from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().