Think tanks for a new generation of regional innovation policies

ABSTRACT

Regional innovation policy, and related research, are being pressurized to transform by today’s grand societal challenges. Our paper acknowledges the efforts of authors in this field to address this pressure and addresses how new emergent framings of innovation policy can be operationalized in practice. We explore how co-generative research can help achieve this and share the case of a think tank in the Basque Country (Spain) which we describe as a hybrid space because of the way researchers and policy makers work together. The case is then used to revisit the methodology that researchers have used for co-generation (action research for territorial development) and to upgrade this methodology with a new concept, an action research think tank. The final discussion goes beyond action research and the case study, to look at how co-generation can improve learning processes between policy makers and researchers in the field.

KEYWORDS:

• Grand societal challenges
• innovation policy
• co-generation
• think tank
• action research

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and the Etorkizuna Eraikiz initiative for supporting the research described in the article and the Etorkizuna Eraikiz Think Tank for open access data provided in https://www.gipuzkoa.eus/en/web/etorkizunaeraikiz/biblioteca-el-trabajo-del-futuro

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Orkestra is a research institute with the development of the Basque Country in its mission. It focuses on collaborative research processes with territorial stakeholders to achieve this mission but also has its own values, principles, diagnoses and methodological proposals to achieve this goal.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge that the project described in the paper has been funded by the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa.