Innovation and competence building in the learning economy – implications for innovation policy,” (unpublished paper

This memorandum has been worked out in the context of 'Kunnskapsdugnaden'. A major national effort to develop and national innovation policy strategy for Norway organised by Tekna (the national union of engineers), LO (the national union of workers) and NAF (The national association of employers). It brings together central results from research on innovation and relates those results to main characteristics of the Nordic countries. It makes the following points: The distinction between knowledge about the world, easy to codify, and know-how, embodied in people or embedded in organizations, is crucial for theory and policy. The corresponding distinction between science- and experience-based learning helps understand why the link from the science-base to innovation performance is weak. The skill-biased technical change in the current era reflects ‘the learning economy ’ where the rate of change in technologies and organization has accelerated. In the learning economy there is a need to rethink the role of education, and of universities, and give more attention to personal skills and interaction with practice. Nordic countries perform well both in the long and the medium term on the basis of a kind of socia