Three strategically important uses of IT in the construction industry are the storage and management of project documents on webservers (EDM), the electronic handling of orders and invoices between companies (EDI) and the use of 3-D models including non-geometrical attributes for integrated design and construction (BIM). In a broad longitudinal survey study of IT use in the Swedish Construction Industry the extent of use of these techniques was measured in 1998, 2000 and 2007. The results showed that EDM and EDI are currently already well-established techniques whereas BIM, although it promises the biggest potential benefits to the industry, only seems to be at the beginning of adoption. In a follow-up to the quantitative studies, the factors affecting the decisions to implement EDM, EDI and BIM as well as the actual adoption processes, were studied using semi-structured interviews with practitioners. The theoretical basis for the interview studies was informed by theoretical frameworks from IT-adoption theory, where in particular the UTAUT model has provided the main basis for the analyses presented here. The results showed that the decisions to take the above technologies into use are made on three differ- ent levels: the individual level, the organizational level in the form of a company, and the organiza- tional level in the form of a project. The different patterns in adoption can to some part be explained by where the decisions are mainly taken. EDM is driven from the organisation/project level, EDI mainly from the organisation/company level, and BIM is driven by individuals pioneering the technique.

This paper analyses how Finland’s circular economy policy attends not only to the promotion and acceleration of innovation, but also the reconfiguration of resource intensive systems. Socio-technical transitions research has historically focused on niche innovation processes. Yet recently, increasing attention has been placed on policy processes that seek to destabilise and disrupt incumbent systems and practices. Furthermore, the social justice aspects of system phase out policies have been brought to the fore. Our qualitative analysis of Finland’s circular economy policy programme draws upon the transformative innovation policy and sustainability transitions policy-mix literatures, extending the transformative outcome framework to include outcomes related to the repercussions of regime destabilisation, coordination and tilting the socio-technical landscape. Our analysis shows that Finland’s circular economy policy programme aims predominantly at niche stimu lation and acceleration, with little emphasis on the regime destabilisation or coordination. Overall, the policy proposals aim toward a strategy of progressive system change, an orientation shaped by the country’s corporatist approach to policy making and pre-existing plans.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between competition and innovations. Making use of growth models where the incentive effects of competition on innovation, and consequently growth, are considered, the effect of competition on technological progress is examined. The interplay between competition and corporate governance and their combined effect on innovations are also examined. Furthermore, the interaction between R&D subsidies and competition and the additionality of an R&D subsidy are analytically elaborated as an extension to the already formulated model of an inverted U-shape relationship between competition and innovations. The three key hypotheses analyzed in this study are: 1) competition policy has important complementarities with R&D policy in the fostering of an innovative environment; 2) R&D subsidies should in all cases be carefully monitored; 3) the additionality of R&D subsidies tends to be strongest at moderate degrees of competition. The findings are that the degree of competition within the industry should be taken into account in the granting of R&D subsidies. A policy mix of R&D policy and competition policy may increase the additionality of an R&D subsidy. As for the monitoring of subsidies, the findings are that all forms of subsidies to R&D ventures should be carefully monitored. Finally, an R&D subsidy tends to have strongest additionality at moderate degrees of competition.

Innovations can be seen as an engine of long-term economic growth. Firms conduct research and development (R&D) activities to create new production technology, methods or products in order to rival their competitors. In addition to benefiting the inventor, new innovations have considerable positive externalities through knowledge spillovers. However, the socially optimal level of innovations may not be achieved, because firms can underinvest in R&D if they are not compensated for the positive externalities produced by their R&D activities. Public R&D programs aim to encourage innovation by compensating firms for the positive externalities that they produce. Finland’s recent public efforts on fostering innovation have been globally high by many indicators. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of these efforts has been relatively little scrutinised. This thesis studies the effectiveness of Finnish R&D program in fostering innovation outputs at the firm level. Firm-level patent statistics are used as a proxy for the innovativeness of a firm. A major contribution of this thesis is the comprehensive database that has been constructed and employed for the analysis. The database includes firm-level innovative characteristics for all the Finnish firms during a ten-year sample period, altogether covering more than two million observations for over 400 000 firms. Most of the studies on the effectiveness of the Finnish R&D program rely on the assumption that the researcher has full information on the relevant innovative characteristics that affect a firm’s program eligibility. This thesis addresses the program selectivity concern by employing an instrumental variable approach that exploits regional variation in public R&D funding stemming from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) aid regulations. The estimates suggest that when the program selection bias is neglected, program participation is associated with around 10 percentage point increase in patenting probability among active patentees, whereas for all firms, the increase in patenting probability is only around 0.1 percentage points. However, the instrumental variable estimates do not confirm any significant causal effect of R&D program on patenting. This thesis highlights the importance of accounting for the selection bias induced by the R&D program selection criteria. The public R&D agency is found to select firms strongly based on the same characteristics that are highly associated with innovation within firms. Therefore, it is important to ask if some of the supported firms might have had conducted their R&D projects even in the absence of the public support. Analysing the R&D program’s selection criteria plays a major role in scrutinising the effectiveness of public R&D subsidies and in the further development of public innovation policies.

This paper analyses the occurrence of governance innovations for forest ecosystem service (FES) provision in the forestry sector in Europe and the factors that influence innovation development. Based on a European-wide online survey, public and private forest owners and managers representing different property sizes indicate what type of governance innovation activities they engage in, and why. To investigate forestry innovations as systems, the analysis focuses on biophysical, social and technical factors influencing innovation development. The results of our exploratory quantitative analysis show that most innovation activities identified are largely oriented towards biomass production. Accordingly, most forest owners implement efficiency-driven optimisation strategies for forest management and technological improvement for provisioning service supply, to generate income. In contrast, the provision of regulating and cultural services is not yet a prominent part of forestry innovation activities. Reasons are rooted in a market-oriented economic rationale focusing on timber production, a lack of financial resources to compensate for other FES provisions or institutions to provide backup and security to forest owners and managers for engaging in innovation development. Given that the provision of a wide range of FES is a politically well-established objective for forest management in Europe, a strategy is needed that helps to align actors and sectors for supporting and co-financing related forest management approaches and business models. The current revision of the forest related policy framework on EU level under the EU Green deal poses a window of opportunity for better fostering novel governance approaches for more sustainable FES provision.

The licentiate thesis discusses the growth effects of nonproprietary innovations in the context of endogenous growth models. Nonproprietary innovations are exemplified by open source software products, and the discussion of their growth effects is motivated by a recent demonstration by Gilles Saint-Paul that for plausible parameter values they reduce the growth rate in an endogenous growth model. The thesis contains short discussions of the history OS software, the earlier theoretical and empirical literature concerning with the motives of its producers, and some earlier endogenous growth models. After the presentation of this background information, two different ways of implementing nonproprietary innovations into an endogenous growth model are contrasted with each other in it. The first of these is the model which is due to Saint-Paul. In it growth is caused by specialization, and nonproprietary innovations are produced by 'philanthropists' who do not participate in the economy in other ways. However, it is pointed out below that OS software is often produced by employees of the IT sector or IT students, and that currently its producers are mostly not motivated by philanthropy. It is also argued below that it would be more natural to assume that growth was caused by creative destruction than that it is caused by specialization. This motivates the introduction of the other considered model. It is a model of growth through creative destruction, and it can be used for representing not only a situation in which nonproprietary innovations are produced by 'philanthropists' from outside the economy, but also a situation in which employees of the research sector produce nonproprietary innovations as a hobby in their free time, and in which they evaluate the participation in their production positively. An analysis of the latter model shows that the validity of Saint-Paul's result is not affected by the shift to a model of growth through creative destruction. However, it also turns out that when nonproprietary innovations are produced by employees of the research sector, they do promote economic growth for plausible parameter values in the context of the latter model, provided that the research sector is not too capital intensive.

New innovations are called for to renew the European forest sector into bioeconomy. However, little research exists on how the industry innovativeness is publicly perceived. Using data collected with an online questionnaire in four European countries, we investigate perceptions related to forest sector innovations on 13 current and new bioeconomy-related products and services. Altogether, 218 valid responses were received in 2015, and the data were analysed using descriptive statistics, performance-importance analysis, and Gartner's innovation hype cycle. Based on our results, the respondents were in the strongest agreement that the forest sector has since the year 2000 has produced innovations related to wood building systems, construction materials, and wood composites. In the next 15 years, they foresaw a decline in innovations related to biofuels and paper products. The European forest sector also has future potential in wood construction, which is likely related to international policy targets related to carbon mitigation and capture. The observed variation in perceptions among the respondents on forest sector innovativeness calls for strengthening industry R&D, as well as by improving societal awareness of ongoing innovation projects by developing better communication.

Service-based alternatives to private vehicles and public transport are increasing. These innovations are hoped to boost the transition to sustainable mobility, addressing challenges such as congestion, air quality and the large share of CO2 resulting from traffic. To achieve this transition, there is an urgent need for collaboration between private companies and public authorities, especially locally. We claim that insufficient attention is paid to the agencies of the practical actors, such as car sharing operators, which is the key to understanding what this collaboration requires. Orchestrating the collaboration successfully is also a prerequisite for the sustainability of the services. We use interview data from car sharing operators and public authorities in Finnish cities to analyze the local-level implementation of shared mobility services. Our results show how the local public authorities play a crucial role in allowing the services to flourish but also ensure the services’ environmental and social sustainability.

The impending climate emergency, the Paris agreement and Sustainable Development Goals demand significant transformations in economies and societies. Science funders, innovation agencies, and scholars have explored new rationales and processes for policymaking, such as transformative innovation policy (TIP). Here, we address the question of how to orient the efforts of science, technology, and innovation policy actors to enable transformations. We build on sustainability transitions research and a 4-year co-creation journey of the TIP Consortium to present twelve transformative outcomes that can guide public policy agencies in evaluating and reformulating their projects, programmes, and policies. We illustrate the transformative outcomes in two empirical cases: transitions towards mobility-as-a-service in the Finnish transport system and the emergence of speciality coffee in Colombia. We argue that the twelve transformative outcomes can guide public policy agents to fundamentally transform their ways of thinking and operation in advancing transformative change.