UNU-MERIT at 25 years : how doctoral training at UNU-MERIT contributes to the community of scholars in the economis of innovation?

This paper contributes to literature on the emergence of innovation studies as a scientific field. This area of research documents the mechanisms, interactions and meeting spaces that innovation scholars have developed to give substance and legitimacy to their work. What role is there for the training of young scholars in the development of this scientific field? Based on a web survey of UNU-MERIT's PhD alumni, we explore the ways in which doctoral training at a major research institute has contributed to the formation of young scholars in the broad field of innovation studies. In line with literature on the creation of science and technology human capital, we find that doctoral training grants PhD holders the technical knowledge and skills, together with the relational skills that sustain their membership and scholarly contributions to innovation studies. The evidence likewise suggests that the contribution of UNU-MERIT's PhD programme on the building of innovation research capacities in developing countries is constrained by postgraduate decisions to stay in the developed world. Young scholars follow a career development strategy of linking to mentors and key senior researchers, while scientific interactions with fellow students are more limited. Social interactions tend to be more prominent for maintaining relations with the research community

Innovation, Social Capital, and Regional Policy: The Case of the Communities First Programme in Wales

This paper analyses how and why different forms of social capital are associated with different forms of innovation within the Communities First programme in Wales. Quantitative analysis shows that the Communities First programme partnerships analysed in this research are supportive of building both bonding and bridging social capital. Different types of bonding social capital appear to be positively related with two of the three types of innovative activity; it is bridging social capital which is statistically more strongly related to innovation outcomes, with some types of bonding social capital actually negatively related to hidden innovation. Whilst social capital building should not be considered a panacea for increasing levels of innovative activity within policies such as the Communities First programme. The qualitative analysis reveals multiple ways in which the Communities First programme partnerships evaluated are actively encouraging the simultaneous formation of bonding and bridging social capital, with evidence of hidden innovation and in particular social innovation being simultaneously formed. It can be stated, therefore, that regional policy aiming to develop non-traditional forms of innovation should more closely and explicitly reflect the relevance of building and maintaining particular types of bonding and especially bridging social capital