Mission Orientation and Innovation Clusters

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Hanna Hottenrott; Professor Dr. Stefan Wurster
• Subject Area: Economic Policy, Applied Economics ; Political Science
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 459792388

Recent research has shown that technological progress contributes to economic development and prosperity. In a world of globalized division of labor, successful research nations hold spatial and sectoral technology clusters. Prominent examples like Silicon Valley, Silicon Wadi, or CERN show how competitive advantages can arise through clustering and that public investments play a fundamental role in initiating successful innovation clusters. The concept of the proactive Entrepreneurial State stresses the role of public technology missions for the success of innovation clusters contributing to technology leadership. The aim of the proposed project is to provide a better understanding of the relationship between the establishment and perpetuation of mission orientation and technology leadership. While in some cases and under certain conditions, national mission orientation may lead to the formation of innovation clusters, such initiatives may also fail. The objective of this research project is therefore to identify the conditions under which national mission orientation, innovation clustering and technology leadership co-occur. Within this research focus, the project will shed light on the persistence of technology leadership profiles over time and to what extent they can be traced back to national mission orientation. Moreover, we will investigate to what extent political institutions, actor constellations and policy programs shape mission formation and the link between mission orientation and countries’ technology profiles. Finally, the project will provide insights into whether missions impact the innovation performance at the national, subnational and firm-level. The project will make use of advanced geocoded patent indicators as well as funding information on research articles drawn from bibliometric databases to identify mission orientation at the national and regional level. In addition, we will collect and combine comprehensive data on the national level to describe political institutions, actor constellations and policy programs as well data at the firm and individual level. The country-level and regional-level analysis will comprise 47 countries and the time period from 1980 to 2020. The individual and firm-level analyses as well as the qualitative case study approach will focus on Germany. While there is a long research tradition for mission orientation in innovation policy, the proposed aspects are still unconnected and international comparative studies are missing. Using qualitative and quantitative research methods, this project will contribute novel insights to research on technology governance and innovation policy.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Israel, Singapore
• Cooperation Partners: Ronit Justo-Hanani, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Yanbo Wang