Innovationer – Dynamik och förnyelse i ekonomi och samhällsliv, 2005, Benner, Mats (red.), Lund: Studentlitteratur, 251 p. and Dynamiska innovationssystem i Norden? Volym 1. Sammanfattande analys och bedömning, Gergils, Håkan, Studieförbundet Näringsliv och samhälle: Stockholm, 107 p.
'Innovation' and 'innovation system' are concepts currently being promoted as tools within the context of ongoing Swedish policy debates, while at the same time, remaining objects of analysis within the wider research community. The reason that politicians, civil servants and researchers are all interested in these
concepts relates to their understanding of a major ongoing transformation in the economic system. The globalisation of economic transac-tions, coupled with their increasing speed is, together with the growing significance of knowledge-intensive industries, viewed as a challenge to contemporary nation-states. This is particularly so in relation to the issue of growth rates. One current interpretation is that this challenge has to be met by a shift in policy, where the facilitation of entrepreneurship and innovation are seen as essential.
Two books recently published on this theme are Innovationer with Mats Benner as editor and Håkan Gergils' Dynamiska innovations-system i Norden? The first serves as an excellent overview of policy and research conducted in this area. Here one finds a broad spectrum of texts, each presenting a particular angle on the matter in hand.
By way of introduction, a rewarding account is given of the history and the meaning of the concepts of in-novation and innovation system. This is followed by texts focusing on different levels of analysis: the level of small businesses, policies at the
regional and national levels etc.
The chapter written by Magnus Klofsten analyses how ideas are born and developed in small, knowledge intensive businesses. One of Klofsten's conclusions is that it is technological knowledge that has the greatest impact upon the early stage of the development of ideas, while Åsa Lindholm Dahlstrand also stresses the importance of technology-based entrepreneurship for the renewal of the business world and the national innovation system.
At the end of the book, Per Frankelius offers a prophecy of what he calls "the 3rd generation innova-tion perspective". In so doing, he goes beyond the concept of innovation system to forward a perspective where innovative processes are located not only within the private sector and the technology sector in particular, but also in the public and non-profit sectors and within other sectors where people and social issues are seen as central to the nature of innovation and development. Two examples here include the so-called 'experience' industry and geriatric care.
The second book, by Håkan Gergils, constitutes a suitable complement to the first. Gergils offers a comparison of the different kinds of innovation policies pursued in the five Nordic countries. He explicitly focuses on the public funding of research, leaving the entrepreneurial climate behind in the greater part of his studies. This focus is justified as being easier to describe since data is easier to collate in this area.
Håkan Gerils concludes that Finland and Iceland are the only countries actually pursuing innova-tion policies worthy of the name. Sweden has admittedly hammered out a national strategy on innova-tion. However, this strategy has not been followed up by implementation in the form of the sufficient allocation of resources, conscious bonding between the academic and the business world or regular reviews of existing innovation systems.
In Gergils's account, technological knowledge is seen as the most important for the development of innovations. He briefly mentions the service sector as a growing area of innovative activity, though this statement is not echoed elsewhere in the report.
In each work, this is the most problematic area, and as such, it thus provides the main point of depar-ture for a reasoned critique. From the current reviewer's point of view as a researcher and as a former project leader, applying a gender perspective to regional policies, most of the accounts given in the books are biased in presenting solely the innovative activity performed by technology-intensive businesses. Indeed, as Frankelius emphasizes, similar activity is also taking place within the public and non-profit sectors. This is not however reported in any great detail here.
As Sweden has a labour market where men are primarily found in those sectors identified as 'key areas for economic development' while women predominate in the sectors excluded from this context, the great majority of the accounts in these two books unfortunately serve as self-fulfilling prophecies in respect of how and where economic development is created.
By Malin Lindberg, PhD student, Luleå University of Technology and former project leader at the Emma Resource Centre for Women in Vilhelmina, Sweden.