Demand, Innovation and Policy -- Underpinning Policy Trends with Academic Analysis

Conference organised by the Research Project “Understanding Public Procure-ment of Innovation (UNDERPINN)” Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, MBS, University of Manchester March 22 and 23 2012, Manchester, UK

Rationale and Aims
In the recent decade, discussions on the role of policy to influence the demand for innovations have seen a revival. “Demand side policies” are back in the spotlight across the EU and indeed the OECD.

Demand side policies can be defined as “all public measures to induce innovations and/or speed up diffusion of innovation through increasing the demand for innovations, defining new functional re-quirements for products and services or better articulating demand”.

This definition covers a range of instruments, including approaches to mobilize public procurement of innovation, improve regula-tion and standardization to create new markets, provide financial support and raise public aware-ness to encourage adoption, support interaction between supply and demand and, last but not least, to combine various instruments to establish lead markets.

The current policy focus is on the intelligent use of public procurement of innovation, but increas-ingly a more comprehensive mix of tools are being applied. However, current ‘demand-side’ policy practices are not broadly underpinned by academic studies on appropriate designs and effects of policy.

This conference seeks to fill that gap. It aims at bringing together academic contributions on the role of policy to target and mobilise demand for innovation. We invite empirical contributions that pro-vide new evidence on the effects and preconditions of policies. We also welcome new theoretical approaches that help to inspire a critical discourse on the underlying rationales.

Target Group and Sessions
The conference is targeted at the academic community. However, it also will include one session with senior policy makers. It will be organised around two keynote lectures, academic sessions (par-allel) and a policy round table.


Topic Areas
The conference aims to provide a forum for multidisciplinary discussion of the policy, economic and legal dimensions of demand side innovation policies. The main focus will be on public procurement of innovation given its prominence in current national policy strategies. However, we invite theo-retical and empirical contributions around a broader set of issues:

• The role of demand in innovation and rationales for policy
• Public demand, public procurement and innovation, e.g.
o Conceptual and methodological challenges to understanding public procurement and inno-vation
o Empirical contributions on particular sectors or technologies (including procurement of
complex projects and supply chain issues)
o Country and regional case studies, looking at specific policy instruments (e.g. pre-commercial procurement)
o The organisational and capability dimensions of public procurement and the link to innova-tion.
o Specific issues related to SMEs and social enterprises in procurement.
o Legislative challenges to foster innovation using public procurement (including reform of EU
Public Procurement Directive)
• Demand side innovation policy instruments beyond public procurement, e.g.
o Regulation, standardisation and innovation
o Broader policy mixes
• The role of demand articulation, foresight and evaluation in demand side policy making

Submission
The deadline for submission of abstracts will be January 13th 2012. The abstract should be 500 words max and describe the overall research question, the theoretical and methodological approach and (preliminary) empirical findings and underlying data. Information on acceptance will be sent out January 20th. For the conference, we aim at extended abstract or full papers with a deadline of March 15 2012. The papers and abstracts will be put on the website. A special issue of a high level journal is planned.

Abstracts shall be sent to Jakob.Edler@mbs.ac.uk

Organising committee
The organising committee is comprised of members of the UNDERPINN project at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research: Jakob Edler, Luke Georghou, Elvira Uyarra

Scientific committee: Knut Blind, Stan Metcalfe, Gustavo Piga, Keith Smith,

Secretariat: Siobhan Drugan Siobhan.Drugan@manchester.ac.uk

Location: University of Manchester, UK