The policymaking process of transformative innovation policy: a systematic review

There is an emerging literature discussing the limits and boundaries to governing socio-technical change for addressing grand challenges through innovation policy. While there are differences within this literature with regard to the researchers' points of departure, there seems to be an agreement on two points: that there is a need for knowledge on how innovation policy can be used to address grand challenges and that practices and associated changes in administrative and organizational capacities of public organizations will be key for delivering such transformative policies. In the literature, important steps have also been made towards formulating a new transformative innovation policy agenda and supporting the re-organization of the innovation policy process. In this paper, we address the fact that the current understanding of what characterizes the transformative innovation policy paradigm, its roots and branches, and the actual contributions of the proposed frameworks on practical aspects of the policymaking process is rather unclear. One of many remaining questions is to which extent current writings contribute to our basic understanding of the policymaking process in terms of agenda setting, policy design, legitimation, implementation, evaluation and policy learning. The purpose of this paper is therefore to take stock of the current understanding of the specificities and challenges of transformative innovation policy throughout the policymaking process and examine the actual contributions for practical policymaking. This is achieved through a systematic review of the received literature on transformative innovation policy (and related concepts). We synthesize the contributions of the current literature to our understanding of how policymakers – in the context of transformative innovation policy – should set agendas; design, legitimate, implement, monitor and evaluate policies; and learn from their experiences. This allows for identifying important aspects and challenges related to different stylized stages of the process, as described by the transformative innovation literature, as well as avenues for further research.