The role of technology assessment in systemic innovation policy

This book conceives of innovation as a non-linear, multi-level, and multi-actor game with many interactions or feedbacks among those actors. We assume that innovation theory, practice, and intervention develop by interactions among the worlds of science, policy, and practice (see Chapter 17 by Smits, Kuhlmann and Teubel in this book). According to this view, we can no longer see innovation as a given thing - as an invention. Instead, innovation is a systemic process involving a heterogeneous set of actors who are inspired by both the potential that science and technology offer and by the context in which they have to function. These actors are involved in a complex decisionmaking process that leads to innovative activity.