The role of institutional entrepreneurship in transformation of the national innovation system: the case study of Lithuania

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the paper is to understand what factors drive transformation of the national innovation system of a transition economy. The case study is based on 32 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with major stakeholders of Lithuanian innovation system. The paper contributes to national innovation system literature by revealing the importance of the human agency role in the process of institutional change. It sheds light on institutional entrepreneurship as the key mechanism that stimulates institutional change and the overall transformation of the innovation system. It shows that institutional entrepreneurs reinforce institutional change through various internal and external pressures. The qualitative findings have important implications for academics, policy makers and managers in all transition countries.

KEYWORDS:

• National innovation system
• transition economy
• institutional entrepreneurship
• qualitative case study

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 A transition country may be highly developed and still face similar issues to a developing country due to historical path dependencies (Lundvall et al. 2009). The term ‘transition’ is defined as a transformation from a planned socialist economy to a market-oriented economy (Kitanovic 2007).

2 Edquist (2005) groups them into four areas: provision of knowledge inputs, demand side activities, creation and change of organizations needed for developing new fields of innovation, support services for innovating firms.

3 https://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/policy/innovation/scoreboards_en.