On the resilience of innovation systems

Abstract

Mission-oriented innovation policies address urgent societal challenges, often through rapid technological upscaling. However, upscaling may endanger the resilience of an innovation system by limiting variety. A resilient innovation system is ambitious in scaling up while intelligently fostering variety. To assess resilience, a country’s technology portfolio needs to be contextualised against global trends. We introduce contextualised variety to uncover threats, windows of opportunity and poorly allocated resources and evaluate the maturing Dutch offshore renewable energy innovation system based on 236 R&D projects 12,000 industry contracts and 34 interviews. Our results indicate that the Netherlands invests in variety for its installation sector, bolstering resilience, while it neglects its foundations sector, indicating a threat. The Netherlands further supports a non-existent traditional wind turbine sector, suggesting poor resource allocation. However, it backs disruptive wind turbines, a window of opportunity contingent on upon concerted innovation policy. This framework demonstrates how to evaluate the resilience of any innovation system.