Public Innovation Research Articles

Analysis of Local Innovation Productivity Agents Within Micro and Small Businesses in The Trade, Industry and Services Segments of The Federal District

Objective: To analyze the effects of the Local Innovation Agent – ​​Productivity program on the adoption of innovative practices and its impacts on the productivity of small businesses monitored in the Federal District in 2023. Theoretical Framework: Innovation is a central element for economic development, a strategy to make companies efficient and competitive in the markets in which they operate, through various types of changes in management and production processes, with results that impact productivity and commercial performance. Method: This research adopted a quantitative-exploratory approach based on the ALI Management System database, which uses the Innovation Radar tool to measure the impact on SMEs and bibliographic research focused on the culture of innovation in organizations. Results and Discussion: The results obtained revealed that the companies monitored during the program generally improved their scores in the dimensions analyzed. The results demonstrate that the commerce, industry and services sectors have different impacts and that innovation is still a topic that requires support and access for small businesses. Research Implications: The data collected in this study show the effectiveness of the Local Innovation Agent Program - Productivity in inducing the adoption of innovative practices by small businesses. It is a fact that by adopting measures to monitor entrepreneurs, it is possible to encourage reflection on the part of managers of these businesses so that they prioritize innovative measures that assist and result in business management capable of facing the adversities of market competition. Originality/Value: This study is valuable for analyzing the effectiveness of public innovation policies, with a focus on small businesses. It is clear that other studies are needed to compare results from different territories to better understand the needs of small businesses.

Empirical Research on the Impact of Technological Innovation on New Energy Vehicle Sales

In the context of global carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals, researching the driving forces and influencing factors behind the growth in sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs) is particularly urgent and crucial. Although the academic community has extensively explored various factors affecting NEV sales, technological innovation, as the core engine driving industry progress, is yet to receive sufficient and in-depth exploration regarding its potential profound impact on sales. Therefore, this study thoroughly analyzes the mechanism by which technological innovation influences sales, supplementing the existing literature, exploring sustainable industry development, and guiding the optimization of business strategies and precise government policies. This research employs the quality of NEV technology patents as a proxy variable for technological innovation, and conducts an empirical analysis using China’s NEV sales data from 2015 to 2022. The results of the study show the following: (1) the quality of technological innovation significantly contributes to the growth of new energy vehicle sales. This conclusion still holds when the administrative protection of intellectual property rights and the government’s public innovation environment indicators are used as instrumental variables of technological innovation quality. (2) Technological innovations in different links of the new energy vehicle industry chain have a positive impact on sales, especially those in the midstream battery, motor, and downstream charging services. This shows that in the critical period of new energy vehicle development, not only is the breakthrough of key technologies crucial, but also, non-critical technologies can promote sales growth by improving user experience and product performance. (3) Compared with plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), the overall technological innovation of new energy vehicles (NEVs) has a more significant effect on the sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs). (4) In addition, the study finds that there is no significant difference between high-quality and low-quality technological innovations on the promotion of new energy vehicle sales, which indicates that the market values the overall effect of technological innovations more than the mere level of quality. The study of the impact of technological innovation on sales in different branches of the new energy industry chain can help to clarify the direction of technological innovation, optimize resource allocation, promote the synergistic development of the industry chain, enhance market competitiveness, and provide a scientific basis for policy formulation.

The social shaping of biotechnological innovation. The case of Covid-19 protein vaccine in Cuba and the US

AbstractLike other technologies, vaccines are socially shaped by socio-economic, political and organisational factors. Property rights, value capture strategies and public innovation policies guide research teams in the biochemical design of vaccines, with inevitable consequences for their price and accessibility. The Covid-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to analyse this institutional shaping process and its consequences for global public health from a political economy perspective. Indeed, the same type of invention, a recombinant protein vaccine, was simultaneously and originally developed in the US and Cuban biopharmaceutical industries and in the field of philanthropic Open Innovation. The article shows, through empirical research that collected direct testimony from scientists and privileged observers of the vaccine development fields, how certain norms and values characteristic of the US industry (financialization, assetization and de-risk) created a path dependency in the use of proprietary and experimental biotechnologies that made the US vaccine Nuvaxovid more expensive and complex to produce, but no more effective and safe than Abdala, Soberana 02 and Corbevax. In addition, the institutional constraints of the US biopharmaceutical industry on radical innovation, even within a mature biotechnology platform such as protein vaccines, would have resulted in a competitive disadvantage for Nuvaxovid, which was as expensive as an mRNA vaccine but less rapid to market and less reliable in delivery. The case of protein vaccines against Covid-19 thus shows how the institutional architectures of techno-scientific capitalism create not only inequalities but also inefficiencies, and that an innovation path with excellent results is possible even in competition where the market is not the dominant order of worth.

CIVIC ADVOCACY CAMPAIGNS: DIRECTIONS OF INVOLVEMENT OF POLITICAL ACTIVISTS

The article is devoted to the research of civic engagement processes, which are gaining more and more publicity in world political science. Applying modern professional approaches, the author offers an explanation of the recruitment of civil advocacy through a clear political goal and connection with the current situational context. The article reveals and describes the main components of measuring the involvement of political activists within the framework of modern civil advocacy campaigns. The author reveals the mechanisms of expressing views and positions, protecting one’s rights and influencing decision-making processes at different levels of management. It is emphasized that civil advocacy covers a wide range of activities aimed at participation in political processes. The text examines advocacy campaigns in the political practice of consolidated democracies as organized events aimed at drawing attention to specific problems and achieving policy changes or raising public awareness. In the work, an appeal was also made to the qualification requirements and job duties of the leaders of civil campaigns. The article analyzes the actualization of the issue of civil advocacy in social and political innovations at the current stage. It is noted that in developed democratic countries a tendency to pay attention to social public innovations is outlined. It has been established that the development of civil society in Ukraine involves the development of a national model of engaging citizens in conducting advocacy campaigns. Attention is paid to attracting new active participants, for whom public advocacy campaigns become a factor in forming an environment of collaboration and expanding the circle of social communication. Emphasis is placed on the continuous inclusion of individuals and groups in activities aimed at improving the public environment and forming conscious public leadership and an atmosphere of social success. In the final part of the article, the author emphasizes that effective public involvement involves a variety of approaches. It was concluded that the decisive factor that prompts citizens to take a proactive position and participate in civil advocacy campaigns are pragmatic needs and ideas about achieving a state of satisfaction of requirements.

Unpacking the agricultural innovation and diffusion for modernizing the smallholders in rural China: From the perspective of agricultural innovation system and its governance

Innovation is perceived as a crucial tool for addressing the serious global challenges faced by the agriculture sector. This paper focuses on a new local public agricultural innovation project in the context of rural China, and intends to capture the embodied agricultural innovation and dissemination network for modernizing the smallholders. Through integrating the concepts of Agricultural Innovation System and Agricultural Innovation Governance, we develop a comprehensive framework for understanding the partnerships between agri-technicians and small farmers within the network structured by innovation governance practices. In-depth interview and network analysis methods were used to scrutinize the linkages among actors engaged with the agricultural innovation programme in case area and detect the achievements in enabling smallholders to upgrade technical trajectories in production and fostering modern farmers at the local levels. Our empirical analysis suggests that the single-center and multi-level network produced in the agricultural innovation practices, which is distinctive to the previous simplistic linear model for technology transfer, demonstrates obvious effectiveness in diffusing the new knowledge both vertically and horizontally, and that the grassroots sub-network generates the interaction space between agronomic experts and farmers for building mutual trust and co-producing technologies suitable for local conditions. Through allocating financial resources and supervising the public agricultural innovation projects, the provincial government indirectly dominates the directionality of local agricultural innovation for enabling smallholders to learn emerging technologies and cultivating the new generation of professional farmers. Nevertheless, the current agricultural innovation practice in case area has not completely avoided the social selection bias due to the clear marginalization of some vulnerable smallholders, and the duration of innovation projects imposed negative influence on the persistent collaborations between agri-technicians and smallholders in places. It is argued that for meeting the national agenda of agricultural modernization and common prosperity in rural area, how to reform the management measures of public innovation projects and enable the vulnerable farmers to equally engage with the innovation activities and share the interests brought by new technologies are the urgent challenges need to be addressed in the future.

Who captures the state? Evidence from irregular awards in a public innovation grant program

AbstractResearch summaryThis study utilizes the administrative data of an innovation grant program in a major emerging economy to study which firms are best positioned to capture the state and access resources beyond what their rule‐complying merits command. We trace the grant allocation process and directly observe occurrences of rule‐violating funding. We show that firms vary in capability to secure irregular awards, depending on factors such as geographic proximity and the social and bureaucratic setting within which entrepreneurs and officials interact. Furthermore, by comparing the actual allocation of irregular awards with the counterfactual scenario in which recipients were evaluated solely based on grant rules, we conclude that crony capitalism, rather than bureaucratic heroism, is the primary driver of irregular awards.Managerial summaryGovernments often use innovation grant programs to promote firm innovation, but these programs sometimes fail to achieve their objectives due to grant officials violating policy rules to provide resources to undeserving firms. We study a public funding program in a major emerging economy to analyze the bureaucratic structure and the social dynamics within which entrepreneurs and bureaucrats interact to identify the sources of state‐resource misallocation. We find that geographic distance, intragovernmental checks and balances, and the lack of direct social intermediary connecting entrepreneurs with bureaucrats help reduce the likelihood of collusion for state‐resource misallocation. Our results generate insights to help guide the (re)design of public funding programs, particularly in countries with low levels of transparency and public accountability.

Strategic Digital City: Multiple Projects for Sustainable Urban Management

In the last two decades, sustainable urban environments have been predominant, meaning that knowledge production has accompanied this growth. The objective of this study is to present multiple projects for sustainable urban management applied in cities, based on the original Strategic Digital City (SDC) concept, model, and project. The research methodology included an SDC systematic literature review, highlighting the sustainability and respective action research of 11 doctoral theses and multiple projects. The obtained results highlight a set of published multiple projects that form a practical analytical cycle of sustainable and interconnected urban processes through the original SDC framework proposition, SDC, which can be applied in different cities in different countries. The innovations present in the SDC multiple projects propose a theoretical–empirical debate in the interdisciplinary areas of urban management, municipal administration, and sustainable public innovation, with a focus on local government and democracy studies, prioritizing sustainable strategies in cities and not just technologies. The conclusion reiterates that the original multiple projects, created and applied in different cities, present an interdisciplinary advance in sustainable urban management areas and public administration, focused on sustainable urban studies.

Bubbles, currents and splashes: metaphors to make sense of innovation and learning practices in the public sector

This paper explores how metaphors can help create and reflect on project-based training initiatives in the public sector. We build on the experience of a capacity-building program for public servants led by the Brazilian National School of Public Administration (Enap) in 2020. We used the metaphor of a project as a collective diving both to design the methodology of the program, and also to analyse its effects after the end of the projects. Through conversations with project facilitators and participants, we expanded the initial metaphor, to explore how diving connects to breathing, a necessary condition for experimentation and learning. Additionally, we found that the project conditions were like bubbles and currents, creating a reference for understanding the relationship with the environment in which teams are embedded. Finally, we looked at the variable yet often overlooked outcomes that can be understood as splashes, a key metaphorical concept for discussing programs that aim to simultaneously foster public innovation and collective learning. In this paper, we present an example of metaphors acting as boundary objects, adding granularity and nuance to the inquiry into public innovation initiatives, and identifying their possible implications in relation to institutional logics and complex structures.

Scaling of social initiatives: the role of entrepreneurial skills and positions

PurposeThe scaling of social initiatives is important to achieve broad social impact based on successful small-scale experiments. This paper focuses on the influence of the characteristics of the initiators of social initiatives on scaling processes. The limited literature on this topic highlights two critical actor characteristics: high entrepreneurial skills and a central position in the area. Both characteristics influence two critical components of the scaling process: mobilizing stakeholders and focusing on retaining effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to explore these complex relationships in a deductive analysis and to use these findings for an inductive analysis to generate new insights and extend our academic understanding.Design/methodology/approachA comparative qualitative study of 20 social initiatives in the Dutch social sector was conducted, including 48 in-depth interviews with initiators and stakeholders in three different areas – mental health, debt and labour participation.FindingsHigh entrepreneurial skills are more important for mobilizing stakeholders and focusing on retention of effectiveness than the position of the initiators, but these are a condition rather than a guarantee. Creating space for scaling and investing in measuring effectiveness in other contexts are also important.Originality/valueBy combining the literature on social entrepreneurship and public innovation and conducting an empirical study, our study provides a broad and nuanced picture and brings precision to our understanding of the relationships between initiators' entrepreneurial skills and position and the scaling process.

Is there a public innovation gap? Evidence from technology transfer

Is there a public innovation gap? Evidence from technology transfer

Debate: Whether and how public innovations create value

Debate: Whether and how public innovations create value

Let’s pack the backpack together: rethinking routines in public innovation as interactions and public value creation

ABSTRACT Routines are an essential aspect of innovation processes as all new ideas must be implemented into daily routines to work. Previously, public management theory has understood routines as barriers to innovation that constrain collaboration due to inertia. This study aims to introduce a new understanding of routines as a precondition for innovation processes. By employing organizational theory and public management theory, we investigate routines through the micro-processes involved. Based on findings from an ethnographic fieldwork study involving the introduction of at-home chemotherapy, we suggest a rethinking of the notion of routines by explicating intra- and inter-organizational interactions and value creation.

Sources of heterogeneous treatment effects of incorporating public innovation intermediaries for SMEs: evidence from Japan’s Kohsetsushi

ABSTRACT A series of public administration reforms were implemented in Japan to cope with the secular stagnation since the 1990s, some of which took the form of the incorporation of public organisations. Drawing on the incorporation of Kohsetsushi, public innovation intermediaries for SMEs, this study evaluates its average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) by applying the difference-in-differences (DID) model to panel data (2000–2021). Local governments decided whether and when to incorporate Kohsetsushi, which suggests staggered treatments and heterogeneous treatment effects. Applying the conventional two-way fixed-effects DID model to panel data with staggered treatments may yield biased ATTs due to contaminated comparisons where early-treated units are used as a control group. This study adopted the DID model to correct the bias, which clarified the correlation between the treatment timings and treatment effects on technology diffusion. Kohsetsushi incorporated late enhanced research and inventive activities with geographically broad spillover while reducing technical consultation with localised spillover. Sources of heterogeneity are discussed from the perspectives of agglomeration externalities, industrial knowledge bases, and learning capacity.

Междисциплинарный подход к оказанию услуг в сфере здравоохранения: российские практики в экспертных оценках в кейсе паллиативной помощи

Public innovations in the development of palliative care within the framework of an interdisciplinary approach introduced by the Federal Law № 18-FZ dated 06.03.2019 "On Amendments to the Federal Law "On the Basics of Public Health Protection in the Russian Federation" on palliative care" require expert assessments, which determines the relevance of the research topic and goal setting – to describe the state and identify changes in the organization of palliative care in the Russian Federation in expert assessments in connection with the introduced public innovations. The research methods are: secondary analysis of foreign model of palliative care organization and longitudinal study with the method of expert assessments of 2017, 2023. The results of the study are as follows. Firstly, it is revealed that under modern conditions, interdisciplinary approach is becoming a methodological basis for ensuring health systems sustainability. Secondly, the results of longitudinal study show that introduced public innovations in transformation of the Russian palliative care model increase expert assessments to satisfactory positioning concerning most components of palliative care organization, which was characterized as "very low" and "low" in 2017. Thirdly, such a component as "exemption from work for persons caring for a seriously ill family member (sick leave for care)", which received low expert ratings, is the growing point in the organizational model of palliative care.

The Influence of Demand-Based Policy Instruments on Urban Innovation Quality—Evidence from 269 Cities in China

Enhancing the quality of urban innovation is a powerful strategy for advancing urban sustainability. A strong public innovation policy is a crucial building block for advancing urban innovation quality. This study identifies innovative procurement instances from over 640,000 public procurement contract data through textual analysis to investigate how urban innovation quality could benefit from demand-based policy instruments. The study’s findings indicate the following: (1) It provides evidence that the adoption of public innovation procurement has a significant impact on urban innovation quality, suggesting an inverse U-shaped relationship between the two. (2) Heterogeneity analysis reveals public innovation procurement stimulates urban innovation quality more remarkably in cities with provincial status and provincial capitals, as well as in eastern cities. (3) We discovered that it is not possible to increase the quality of urban innovation in the city when human capital in the city is performing poorly and when there is also a lack of external technology and entrepreneurial activity. Finally, this paper argues that our findings also provide important insights for the development of proactive innovation policy instruments, the construction of innovative cities, and the realization of sustainable development in countries around the world, especially in developing countries.

Influence of public innovation laboratories on the development of public sector ambidexterity

ABSTRACT Ambidexterity has become a major issue for public organizations as they manage increasingly strong contradictory pressures to optimize existing processes while innovating. Moreover, although public innovation laboratories are emerging, their influence on the development of ambidexterity remains largely unexplored. Our research aims to understand how innovation laboratories contribute to the formation of individual ambidexterity within the public sector. Drawing from three case studies, this research underscores the influence of these labs on public ambidexterity through the development of innovations by non-specialized actors and the deployment and reuse of innovative managerial practices and techniques outside the i-labs.

Reliability and validity of the public innovation Hexagon (PIH) as applied to the Spanish social services

Social services are a protection system that seeks to assist people throughout their lives. Innovation is essential for enabling us to respond to the problems that society is currently facing and to adapt to our changing world. This paper validates an instrument based on the Public Innovation Hexagon (PIH), for measuring the degree to which an innovation culture is being implemented in the Spanish social services system. A sample group of social services professionals were asked to complete a questionnaire based on the variables that make up the PIH model. After our initial validation of the PIH model, we reduced the 42 initial items to 32, while maintaining the initial six dimensions. The objective was to eliminate redundant items and ensure that the resulting end model was more solid and reliable. The new improved model (PIHn) that we created achieved greater consistency with a smaller number of items while maintaining the initial six dimensions.

How does AI surpassing humans influence public innovativeness? A multi-method empirical study

ABSTRACT As AI develops, it has become more capable and efficient than humans. We investigate how AI surpassing humans in capabilities and performance (hereafter AI surpassing humans) influences public innovativeness. Based on the research of personal innovativeness motivation and expectation value theory, we propose that AI surpassing humans enhances public innovativeness. A multi-method empirical study proves our hypothesis. In Study 1, we perform textual analysis on 1.2 million tweets. We reveal that people mention more words about innovation for AI surpassing humans. In Study 2, a controlled experiment proves the main and mediating effect. Theoretically, we contribute to the research on the impact of AI and personal innovativeness. This is the first to investigate how AI surpassing humans influences public innovativeness. Meanwhile, we fill this gap in how AI impacts public innovativeness. In addition, our findings have practical implications for government and policymakers, companies, and the public. Especially for government and policymakers, we suggest they need to pay more attention to the potentially overlooked impact of AI outperforming humans on public innovativeness compared with other common techniques. Meanwhile, we point out that encouraging the public to keep human intellectual superiority may attenuate the effect of AI surpassing humans.

Coproduction, public sector innovation and governance: a systematic literature review

Purpose The purpose of this study is examined whether coproduction appears spontaneously in the literature on public sector innovation and governance, the citizens’ role in coproduction and the implication of citizens’ participation in the governance of innovation networks. Design/methodology/approach The review complied with preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) protocol. The search was performed in the Ebsco, Scopus and WOS databases. The authors analyzed 47 papers published from 2017 to 2022. Thematic and content analysis were adopted, supported by MAXQDA. Findings The papers recognize the importance of the citizens in public innovation. However, only 20% discuss coproduction, evidencing the predominance of governance concepts related to interorganizational collaborations – but not necessarily to citizen engagement. The authors also verified the existence of polysemy regarding the concept of governance associated with public innovation, predominating the term “collaborative governance.” Research limitations/implications The small emphasis on “co-production” may result from the search strategy, which deliberately did not include it as a descriptor, considering the research purpose. One can consider this choice a limitation. Practical implications Considering collaborative governance as a governing arrangement where public agencies directly engage nonstate stakeholders in a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented and deliberative (Ansell and Gash, 2007), the forum where the citizen is supposed to be engaged should be initiated by public agencies or institutions and formally organized, as suggested by Österberg and Qvist (2020) and Campomori and Casula (2022). These notions can be useful for public managers concerning their role and how the forums structure should be to promote collaboration and the presence of innovation assets needed to make the process fruitful (Crosby et al., 2017). Originality/value Despite the collaborative nature of public innovation, the need for adequate governance characteristics, and the importance of citizens in the innovative process, most studies generically address collaborative relationships, focusing on interorganizational collaboration, with little focus on specific actors such as citizens in the governance of public innovation. Thus, it is assumed that the literature that discusses public innovation and governance includes the discussion of coproduction. The originality and contribution of this study is to verify this assumption.

Knowledge about research and facilitation of co-creation with children. Protocol for the article "scoping review of research about co-creation with children".

Children and young people's participation, as stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, applies to both matters that directly and indirectly affect children. Participation is in some countries recognized as a fundamental right and children's engagement seen as a valuable resource. Assisted by conceptual understanding of co-creation, children may be enabled to engage and participate in a variety of contexts. Knowledge about research on, and facilitation of, co-creation involving children is the theme of the scoping review presented by this protocol. The protocol outlines a scoping review which is to use a systematic approach to synthesize knowledge of research about co-creation with children. By systematically scoping the existing research about co-creation with children, the review will survey the available literature (evidence), identify key concepts, and uncover gaps in knowledge. The overall objective of this scoping review is to gain knowledge of research conducted about all types of co-creation with children, and to identify the gaps that future research should address. This scoping review acknowledges the existence of multiple definitions of co-creation, which vary depending on different contexts. The review will also recognize several other associated concepts, such as co-production, co-design, co-research, and co- innovation, since they are used interchangeably with or align with the understanding of co-creation being reviewed. The methodological framework outlined by the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) for scoping review will be used as a guide for this review. The PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR): Checklist and Explanation will be used during the process. The databases, ERIC (Education Resources Information Centre), Teacher Reference Center, Idunn, Oria, Libris, Kungliga biblioteket, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, Scopus, Academic search elite, Web of Science, Google scholar, will be searched for information on academic books and articles, in May 2024. Also grey literature will be searched for relevant academic references. There are no limitations in date of publication. Language will be limited to English, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish. Following the selection of studies, data will be extracted and analysed. Ethical approval is not required, because only secondary data is collected. Dissemination will include peer-reviewed publications and presentations at conferences regarding public innovation, education, and children`s participations contexts.