Innovation: Formation of a Policy Field and a Policy-making Practice

Innovation policy has established its position amongst policy fields in various countries. In this study the formation and change of Finnish innovation policy is analyzed from the late 1980s until the end of the 2000s. According to current understanding, changes and their dynamics in science, technology and innovation policy have been understood as learning processes, as an adaptation and translation of new ideas, or as a process of isomorphic convergence. This study analyses Finnish innovation policy as a socially constructed phenomenon, or more precisely as a discourse. The study makes explicit how policy construction and changes in policy are enabled and restricted by socially shared policy knowledge deployed in a policy discourse. The study identified and distinguished three phases in the formation of Finnish innovation policy, and three levels of formation in the current innovation policy discourse. The analysis can be useful to researchers and policy practitioners especially in the field of science, technology and innovation policy studies, as well as to researchers interested in methodologies of discourse studies.