Utilization of social science knowledge in science policy: Systems of Innovation, Triple Helix and VINNOVA

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyse the utilization of two academic narratives about innovation policy in policy discourse by examining the policy statements issued by one Swedish agency that was specifically set up to promote innovation policy, the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems, VINNOVA. The main findings of this analysis show that the deployment of the examined academic narratives in policy discourse is not accidental nor is it only limited to a role of legitimating policy decisions. The article shows that although the linear model of knowledge transfer has long been discredited, the notion of knowledge utilization is still useful to policy analysis and may be successfully deployed to understand what lies behind the assertions of mutual interplay between science and policy that characterize contemporary attempts to depict this relation.