Published on 13 January 2009
INSCOPE organized its first Research Workshop on December 12 in Maastricht. In total 45 researchers from Erasmus University Rotterdam, TNO, University of Amsterdam, and Maastricht University participated in this event. The purpose was to give the INSCOPE researchers an opportunity to meet each other, to generate interesting research ideas, and to create an environment for fruitful cooperation between the INSCOPE researchers.
The seminar was opened by Henk Volderda (scientific director INSCOPE) and Andries de Grip (host and board member INSCOPE). Henk Volderda discussed the role of social innovation in today’s society, and emphasized that social innovation determines about 75% of innovation success. He stressed the role of institutional stakeholders and knowledge networks such as INSCOPE to further increase our knowledge on social innovation in order to improve the competitive position of the Netherlands. Andries de Grip welcomed the researchers to Maastricht University and explained the program of the seminar.
The opening session was followed by the break-out INSCOPE theme sessions, headed by the six theme coordinators. Each session started with a paper presentation of one of the seminar participants, followed by a discussion. The end of the session was reserved for a synthesis on theme research goals, and the role of INSCOPE.
The break-out sessions were followed by a plenary session, were the theme coordinators presented the conclusions of their break-out session. Much attention was paid to the relevant research topics, research methods, and the role of INSCOPE to enable researchers to contribute to both scientific research and business practice. The theme coordinators emphasized the important role of multilevel and multi-method research, and the cooperation between researchers and business partners. The role of INSCOPE is to become a discussion platform, to coordinate research efforts, share databases and finance joint collaboration between INSCOPE partners. Furthermore, INSCOPE can play an important role in the exposure of Dutch social innovation research and attract means to finance the acquisition of databases and promising joint research projects.
The plenary session was closed by a lecture of Koenraad Debackere. Koenraad who holds a chair in Technology and Innovation Management at the K.U. Leuven and is also actively engaged in technology transfer as managing director of the K.U. Leuven Research and Development, chair of the venture fund of the K.U. Leuven and chairman of the Leuven.inc, the innovation network of Leuven high-tech entrepreneurs. Debackere reflected on research in technology and innovation. He emphasized the isolated position of the variety of disciplines studying issues of innovations and highlighted many possibilities for fruitful cooperation. Furthermore, he emphasized the crucial role of concepts and theoretical frameworks to study innovation, and the important role of exploiting available databases, combined with sophisticated rich cased based data collection. Finally, he highlighted interesting research methods to study issues of innovation. Debackere discussed many interesting research trajectories in Innovation. Most of these trajectories demand a closer cooperation between different disciplines, integrated database construction, and to explore new and different methods such as quasi-experimental designs and longitudinal research approaches.
