🔬 Innovation Studies

An AI system wrote a scientific paper that passed peer review at ICLR. A comprehensive survey maps the emerging ecosystem of autonomous research agents. And laboratory robots are closing the loop from hypothesis to physical experiment without human intervention.

GenAI doesn't just search for knowledge — it generates it. This new category of 'artificial knowledge' requires new governance frameworks, and organizations with strong existing KM practices capture more innovation value from AI than those without.

The EU Green Deal is the largest experiment in mission-oriented innovation policy ever attempted. Research reveals its systematic blind spots: geographic inequality, distributional injustice, and institutional resistance from powerful actors like defense establishments.

AI platforms are evolving from innovation marketplaces to autonomous orchestrators. Research reveals the tension: platforms enable external innovation while concentrating control over what gets built, by whom, and who captures the value.

Semiconductors are the new oil. The CHIPS Act, EU Chips Act, and Asian counterparts represent massive industrial policy — but chokepoint analysis reveals that true sovereignty requires replicating decades of specialized capabilities that no single nation currently controls.

Three frameworks attempt to close the gap between AI ethics principles and operational practice: comprehensive lifecycle integration, adaptive governance for decentralized organizations, and responsibility as a dimension of innovation quality.

AI is simultaneously resource-intensive to create and resource-cheap to deploy — a paradox that makes it the ideal engine for frugal innovation in constrained settings. Network connectivity, not capital, determines who benefits.

Patents measure invention, not innovation. As innovation increasingly happens through ecosystem-wide collaboration, measurement must shift from counting outputs to mapping connections, knowledge flows, and the collaborative infrastructure that turns ideas into impact.

The Multi-Level Perspective explains sustainability transitions after they happen but struggles to predict them. New research on project speciation, socio-technical experiments, and regime vulnerability is pushing the framework toward prospective analysis of tipping points.

Mission-oriented innovation policy works top-down. Makerspaces work bottom-up. Research from Shenzhen to regional development programs reveals how building institutional bridges between these worlds can combine strategic direction with grassroots creativity.