Competence Building: A Systemic Approach to Innovation Policy

Susana Borrás () and Charles Edquist

No 2013/28, Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: The main question that guides this paper is how governments are focusing (and must focus) on competence building (education and training) when designing and implementing innovation policies. With this approach, the paper aims at filling the gap between the existing literature on competences on the one hand, and the real world of innovation policy-making on the other, typically not speaking to each other. With this purpose in mind, this paper discusses the role of competences and competence-building in the innovation process from a perspective of innovation systems; it examines how governments and public agencies in different countries and different times have actually approached the issue of building, maintaining and using competences in their innovation systems; it examines what are the critical and most important issues at stake from the point of view of innovation policy, looking particularly at the unresolved tensions and systemic unbalances related to competences in the system; and last but not least, it elaborates a set of overall criteria for the selection and design of relevant policy instruments addressing those tensions and unbalances.

Keywords: Innovation system; innovation policy; public policy instruments; Knowledge; R&D; learning; skills; training; education; competences; competence building; innovation policy instruments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L38 M38 O25 O30 O31 O32 O33 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2013-11-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino and nep-knm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2013_028

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