Innovation, Human Capabilities, and Democracy — Towards an Enabling Welfare State

All governments strive to develop and implement policies that contribute to innovation. Both in academic research and policy circles, the concept of National Innovation Systems has represented a significant approach to industrial policy, research and development, and innovation. This book will review the development and implementation of this approach, and its strengths and weakness by considering the experience of Finland, widely regarded as a model of the information society, high-quality equal education, and systemic innovation policy amongst the Nordic welfare states, which themselves have increasingly topped the lists in national competitiveness.

The first part of the book analyzes the foundations, emergence, and development of the National Innovation System approach and its adoption in Finnish science and technology policy throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In the second part of the book an alternative viewpoint to innovation and welfare policy is outlined, based on the idea of capability cultivating institutions as a key foundation, both for national welfare and competitiveness. The development of the Finnish comprehensive school and its special education system is studied in order to clarify the nature of institutional change and learning, and the conditions of governing and developing the enabling services. The concept of an enabling welfare state is developed to answer the challenges of the Nordic model of welfare in a globalizing knowledge-driven economy.

Reijo Miettinen has been Professor of Adult Education in the Institute of Behaviourial Sciences of the University of Helsinki since 2006. He held the Professorship of Research on Innovations and Research Work at the Department of Education, University of Helsinki from 2000-2005. He was the first scientific director of the Finnish National Graduate School for Science and Technology Studies (TITEKO) and actively involved both with the graduate school and with Helsinki Institute of Science and Technology Studies (HIST), a network organization with the participation of research groups from the University of Helsinki and Aalto University. His recent publications include Dialogue and Creativity: Activity Theory in the Study of Science, Technology and Innovations (Lehmanns 2009).