From 7th to 9th June, the Eu-SPRI Conference 2017 took place in Vienna. Researchers from many different world regions participated in this annual event, this time organised under the title “The Future of STI – The Future of STI Policy”.
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Howaldt and Dmitri Domanski from TU Dortmund University’s Social Research Centre, which is SI-DRIVE lead partner, co-chaired together with Effie Amanatidou (Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, www.research.mbs.ac.uk/innovation) and Paul Benneworth (University of Twente, https://www.utwente.nl/en/) a session on “Social Innovation as a Challenge for a Comprehensive Innovation Policy”. The session took place during the whole first conference day, with presentations by researchers from institutions, such as Austrian Institute of Technology (https://www.ait.ac.at/), Nesta (https://www.nesta.org.uk/), Hungarian Academy of Sciences (http://www.krtk.mta.hu/), Institute for Work and Technology (IAT, www.iatge.de/en/home.html) and Innovation Park in Seoul (https://www.innovationpark.kr/).
With a presentation titled “Tapping the Full Innovation Potential of Society – On Social Innovation and a Comprehensive Innovation Policy”, Jürgen Howaldt and Dmitri Domanski reflected on the results of the global mapping of social innovation initiatives in the research project SI-DRIVE regarding its meaning for future innovation policy. Furthermore, they presented the recent developments in the German innovation policy, which besides its traditional focus on technological innovation is increasingly integrating social innovation as an important topic.
The Eu-SPRI Forum (http://www.euspri-forum.eu/) pursues the target of strengthening the interdisciplinary research community in the field of innovation research and policy. The focus is primary on global challenges in different areas such as health, social and environmental conditions. This year’s conference, hosted by the Austrian Institute of Technology, paid special attention to changing practices and patterns of science, technology development and innovation (STI). For more information on Eu-SPRI Vienna 2017, please follow this link (http://euspri-vienna2017.org/).
