Charles Edquist

Professor

Charles Edquist holds, since 2003, The Ruben Rausing Chair in Innovation Management at Lund Institute of Technology, Lund University. There he has built up The Division of Innovation – from zero to 14 people – in a year. Previously he was a professor of economics of innovation at the Department of Technology and Social Change at Linköping University.

Charles Edquist has initiated and led several research groups, often with a strong international orientation and involvement. This has involved raising large amounts of external research funding.

Example of involvement in current longer-term external projects in which he is involved at present.

Charles Edquist is co-ordinator for the project National Systems of Innovation in a Globalising, Knowledge-based Economy: A Comparative Study of Small Countries in Europe and Asia. The participating countries are Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, South Korea and Taiwan. One research group from each country participates in the project, i.e. in total about 35 researchers. The project is running from September 2002 until August 2005. The various national teams are financed by the respective research councils in their home countries. The Swedish part of the study is financed by The Swedish Public Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA) and The Swedish Agency for Growth Policy Studies (ITPS).

The purposes of the project are:

To refine and operationalise the systems of innovation (SI) approach. This means increasing the usability of the SI approach for empirical studies:
– by developing concepts and methodologies suitable for empirical analyses,
– by translating its key concepts into empirical correspondents, i.e. variables reflecting concepts, indicators measuring variables and using comparable sources in this quantitative work, and
– by developing a framework for empirical studies of national systems of innovation. Alternatively this might be called a methodology for analysing different national systems of innovation in a comparative perspective.
To use the SI approach by actually carrying out empirical and comparative studies of the national systems of innovation in the nine participating countries.
To draw policy conclusions. This means identifying problems that should be subject to innovation policy in various systems of innovation, but it also includes studying earlier and currently existing policies.