The purpose of the event, which was organized jointly with the Swedish innovation agency Vinnova and whose participants included 20 political and research experts from Germany, Austria, Sweden, Finland, The Netherlands and Great Britain, was to exchange views on current experience with the growing numbers of new initiatives in different countries on open and user innovation policy. One focal point of the workshop was new approaches in innovation policy, including how to involve individual users and households, as important sources of innovation, in innovation policy. A further meeting is planned for July 2017 in Innsbruck, Austria.
Professor Dietmar Harhoff, Director at the Max Planck Institute that hosted the event, summed up the results: „We discovered that we can learn a lot from each country’s experiences. The processes of innovation are changing rapidly. The group of those who are actively shaping innovation processes is becoming larger and more diverse. A central question, both for innovation research and for policymaking, is what drives this increasing complexity in innovation processes and how can we put its potential to good use. We will continue to pursue this topic avidly.“