Innovation Prizes, Public Policy and New Governance Paradigms

The way our societies functions has been profoundly disrupted by the current health crisis. However, this crisis should not be treated as an isolated phenomenon : it is at the heart of a set of major societal challenges that we face such as global warming. The major societal issues, called also "grand challenges", participate among other issues, to the will for renewing public innovation policies (Cantner et Pyka, 2001 ; Foray et al. 2012 ; Shot and Steinmueller, 2018). Indeed, the very nature of these challenges and their characteristics render traditional public policy tools insufficient, ineffective or inoperative (Mazzuccato, 2018). Voices are arguing for the emergence of new forms of governance of research and innovation. In this context, different paradigms have emerged: « anticipatory governance », « reflexive governance ... and very recently the concept of "tentative governance" which in a way encompasses the other paradigms (Cf. Kuhlmann and Rip, 2018). Tentative governance refers to "provisional, flexible, revisable, dynamic and open approaches that include experimentation, learning, reflexivity, and reversibility (ibid, P. 1091). In addition, the concept of tentative governance governance includes the intervention of various stakeholders. The objective of this paper is to show that platform-based public innovation prizes illustrate a policy instrument that already includes some of the properties mentioned by new concepts of governance. Reseach in economics has focused on the economic efficiency of this tool – innovation prize/contest, considered as an incentive mechanism for innovation and/or as an alternative or complement to patents (Adler, 2011; Williams et al., 2012). Recently this public policy instrument has been analyzed in political science and public management as a public Open Innovation (OI) mechanism (Mergel et Desouza, 2013 ; Mergel, 2018). Following on from this work, we show that public innovation prizes display additional properties than those associated with public OI, such as adaptability, reflexivity and inclusivity. Our methodology is based on an examination of the functioning of a U.S. public innovation platform : (Challenges.Gov) and on the European Commission's portal (Funding&Tenders). In the first case, we mobilize previous work done on challenge.Gov (Liotard and Revest, 2018) and numerous official reports as well as the analysis of the platform's website. In the second case, we have proceeded in the same way, and we have conducted 12 long interviews with prize managers of the European Commission. Our results can be summarized in two parts. First, we highlight the fact that the properties of these two platforms differ: they do not exhibit the same forms of OI. Second, the analysis shows, to varying degrees, that several properties of new governance paradigms are present in the functioning of these platforms. From a broader perspective, we make a connection between the concepts of public OI and governance. In our view, although innovation prizes are not intended to respond to and solve major societal challenges, they can be combined with other public policy instruments, and they can be a source of inspiration for other tools and practices. References Adler, J. H. (2011). Eyes on a climate prize: Rewarding energy innovation to achieve climate stabilization. Harv. Envtl. L. Rev., 35, 1. Cantner, U., & Pyka, A. (2001). Classifying technology policy from an evolutionary perspective. Research policy, 30(5), 759-775. Foray, D., Mowert D., & Nelson, R.. Public R&D; and social challenges: What lessons from mission R&D; programs? Research policy, 2012, vol. 41, p. 1697-1702. Kuhlmann, S., & Rip, A. (2018). Next-generation innovation policy and grand challenges. Science and public policy, 45(4), 448-454. Liotard, I., & Revest, V. (2018). Contests as innovation policy instruments: Lessons from the US federal agencies' experience. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 127, 57-69. Mazzucato, M. (2018). Mission-oriented innovation policies: challenges and opportunities. Industrial and Corporate Change, 27(5), 803-815. Mergel, I., & Desouza, K. C. (2013). Implementing open innovation in the public sector: The case of Challenge. gov. Public Administration Review, 73(6), 882-890. Mergel, I. (2018). Open innovation in the public sector: drivers and barriers for the adoption of Challenge. gov. Public Management Review, 20(5), 726-745. Schot, J., & Steinmueller, W. E. (2018). Three frames for innovation policy: R&D, systems of innovation and transformative change. Research Policy, 47(9), 1554-1567. Williams, H. (2012). Innovation inducement prizes: Connecting research to policy. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 31(3), 752-776.