The evolution of science policy and innovation studies

This article examines the origins and evolution of the field of science policy and innovation studies (SPIS). Like other studies in this Special Issue, it seeks to systematically identify the key intellectual developments in the field over the last 50 years by analysing the publications that have been highly cited by other researchers. The analysis reveals how the emerging field of SPIS drew upon a growing range of disciplines in the late 1950s and 1960s, and how the relationship with these disciplines evolved over time. Around the mid-1980s, substantial parts of SPIS started to coalesce into a more coherent field centred on the adoption of an evolutionary (or neo-Schumpeterian) economics framework, an interactive model of the innovation process, and (a little later) the concept of ‘systems of innovation’ and the resource-based view of the firm. The article concludes with a discussion of whether SPIS is perhaps in the early stages of becoming a discipline.

► Identifies most influential contributions in the field of science policy and innovation studies.
► Analyses the disciplinary origins and subsequent development of the field including the evolving links with other fields.
► Reveals the growing dominance of US authors and explores possible reasons for this.
► Shows how the field has begun to coalesce around evolutionary economics, an interactive model of innovation, ‘systems of innovation’, and the resource-based view of firm.
► Discusses whether innovation studies is perhaps in the early stages of becoming a discipline.