Arrona, A., Zabala--Iturriagagoitia, J.M.
Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research
Abstract
Over the past decade, the literature on innovation studies has begun to recognize the growing complexity associated with innovation policies. However, these complexities, inherent to the policy world, have often not been sufficiently recognized or considered in prescriptive studies of regional innovation policies, which may hinder the contribution being made from the research to the practice of innovation policy.The present conceptual article reflects on the relevance of analytical approaches toward capturing, and interacting with, such complexities. We discuss necessary reflections that should take place in the process of analyzing regional innovation policies so as to grasp and address their complexities in a more comprehensive and holistic manner. We specifically propose the incorporation of interpretive policy analysis, a perspective that has a long history in policy sciences even though it is not extensively developed in the literature on regional innovation studies until now.
