Keep Your Friends Close, Your Enemies Closer: The Case for Inclusive Innovation Policy

Abstract

Innovation policy has developed along two broad fronts: market failure and systems failure. Both focus on investing in innovation (solving a market incentive problem) and building infrastructure for innovation (solving an institutional coordination problem). But an alternative approach to innovation policy, suggested by Juma (2016), is to focus on overcoming latent resistance through inclusive innovation (solving a socio-behavioural resistance problem). We distinguish between innovation policy that seeks to ‘help its friends’ versus innovation policy based about ‘engaging its enemies’. This paper explores what an inclusive innovation policy approach based on engaging with the enemies of innovation might look like and how it would be developed.