State of Uncertainty

Innovation policy through experimentation

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This paper proposes a new model for innovation policy that clearly distinguishes it from industrial policy. The authors challenge the idea, implicit in much existing practice, that governments operate levers that affect innovation in predictable ways, and argue that innovation policy should instead be conceived as a process of discovery, required because the creation and exploitation of new ideas by entrepreneurs is by nature radically uncertain.

Published:
April 2011

Authors:
Hasan Bakhshi, Alan Freeman and Jason Potts