Public organizations as anchors and quartermasters of innovation : the case of ocean science instrumentalities in Nova Scotia, Canada

Abstract

Because there is a lack of empirical research on public innovation in goods, the importance of public organizations for innovation may be underestimated. I show that public organizations engage in the development of important and novel ocean science instrumentalities—instruments and techniques—in Nova Scotia, Canada. I conducted structured first-person interviews to collect data on 27 public and private organizations and the 702 possible interactive learning relationships between them. I use quantitative network analysis methods to confirm the importance of public organizations within this innovation system and to also investigate the nature of interorganizational interactive learning. I find that public organizations have greater degree centrality than private companies and that the removal of public organizations would result in greater network fragmentation than the removal of private companies. I also find that both public and private organizations perform more complex roles than suggested by the limited prior research on scientific instrumentality innovation. The majority of learning interactions between public research organizations and private companies in this network are symbiotic—multiplex and bidirectional. The most important relationships in the network involve bidirectional learning partnerships. These findings contradict the oversimplified view of innovation as linear market transactions. My work reinforces calls for goods to be included in studies of public innovation, makes several methodological contributions that can be used to reveal dark innovation, and identifies the anchoring and quartermastering roles that appear present in this particular scientific instrumentalities innovation system. I also highlight a potentially problematic disconnect between ocean science policies and ocean industry policies in this region.