Marc Kristerson
Title: MISSION-ORIENTED INNOVATION POLICY IMPLEMENTATION DIFFICULTIES IN A SMALL STATE CONTEXT: THE CASE OF ESTONIA
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Erkki Karo, Dr. Veiko Lember
Opponent: Prof. Dr. Rainer Kattel
Defense: 2-3 June 2022
Abstract: For more than a decade Estonia has tried to establish a more strategic science, technology and innovation (STI) policy, however, the implementation has been less generous in impacts and logics. As the European Union (EU) is turning a new page with mission-oriented innovation policies (MIP), this case study is focusing on the difficulties of implementing such an approach in Estonia, based on the previous similar attempts and their barriers. Although being a single case study, it does offer some extrapolated insight into those difficulties, especially in a small state context. As a second output, this paper offers an analysis of institutional change and especially its resistances in a form of layering on a case of STI policy in a small state. Setting out a sort of differential diagnosis to consider what is hindering innovation policy, while in the process the lens has focused most on capacities, culture or ideologies and the policy arena. As such, the theoretical framework remains mostly in a neo-institutional approach combining it with some form of ideological and evolutionary cultural theory and a strategic policy process approach. It also contributes to the debate of technocratic optimism and policy-pessimism within MIP.
Keywords: Mission-oriented innovation policy; implementation; small state; institutional change; ideology
