Innovation assessment: governing through periods of disruptive technological change

ABSTRACT

Current regulatory approaches are ill-equipped to address the challenges of governing through periods of disruptive technological change. This article hones in on the use of assessment regimes at the level of the European Union, particularly in the work of the Commission, to argue for a missing middle between technology assessment and impact assessment. Technology assessment focuses on the upstream governance of science and technology, while impact assessment focuses on the downstream governance of the impacts of specific policy options. What is missing is a form of midstream governance, which I label innovation assessment, to steer polities through periods of disruptive technological change, during which innovations have taken concrete forms and are beginning to diffuse, but still exhibit much scope for rapid, unexpected change and alternative trajectories of development. By juxtaposing these three forms of assessment regimes, I define the main dimensions along which they vary.

KEYWORDS:

• Disruptive innovation
• governance
• impact assessment
• innovation assessment
• technology assessment
• policy appraisal

Acknowledgements

In addition to the three anonymous reviewers, the author wishes to thank the following people for guidance and comments on earlier versions of the article: Cornel Ban; Christopher Bennett; Susana Borrás; André Broome; Martin Bæk Carstensen; Louise Thorn Bøttkjær; Lea Foverskov; Stine Haakonsson; Alan Irwin; Matthias Kranke; Mart Laatsit; Ralf Lindner; Jean-Frédéric Morin; Leonard Seabrooke; and Duncan Wigan.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jacob A. Hasselbalch is a postdoctoral researcher at Copenhagen Business School.

ORCID

Jacob A. Hasselbalch http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5491-7023