The Development of a New Swedish Innovation Policy : A Historical Institutional Approach

It is often claimed that what traditionally have been called technology policies inmany industrialised countries have undergone major changes during the lastdecades. Until the 1980s technology policies were primarily focused on financialsupport to different R&D producing organisations. The focus from the 1990s andforward has to a larger extent been on enhancing the environment for innovation andtechnology transfer. The rationale behind these innovation policies, as the “new”policies are often called, seems also to have been strongly influenced by a “newinnovation paradigm”. Even though innovation policies in different countries seem tohave developed in similar directions, and been inspired by similar ideas, the actualchoices of polices in different countries, varies a lot. As shown by a large number ofstudies in comparative public policy, similar policy ideas can be handled or“translated” in very different ways due to different national policy styles, institutions,cultures, etc. In this text, I elaborate on these issues in an analysis of thedevelopment of a “new” innovation policy in Sweden, in many ways inspired by thenew innovation paradigm, primarily during the last decade. I show how the newSwedish policy is strongly connected not only to the legacies of policy development,but also to the character of political strategies and the structure of the statebureaucracy