The Greening of the Swedish Innovation System : A paper presented at the 13th Conference of The International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society: Innovation, Organisation, Sustainability and Crises, Aalborg University, Denmark, 21-24 June 2010

• Quantitative analysis of “greener” innovation at national systems level is not always possible due to the lack of reliable, comprehensive and adequate data sets. In the Swedish case, there are promising data sets that can be combined, even if one always can debate the adequacy of existing variable definitions. Official data collected by the central statistics authority include several interesting variables on all (!) private and public organizations in Sweden and all (!) employees compiled into time series for a number of years. These can be merged with other data sets on the environmental goods and services sector and energy consumption data in industry and therefore allow for a detailed “demographic” or “population ecology” analysis of environmentally oriented innovation since at least 2003 in industry and the green product sector. In this paper, these databases are described in some detail. Problems of definitions and measurement are particularly discussed. Some initial descriptive statistics are presented. Further, it is suggested to consider some models inspired by demography and population ecology and also include multi-level (in this case national, organizational and individual level) models. In particular it is suggested that diffusion models could be applied, including models in which diffusion processes at organizational level interact with individual level flows of ideas through networks. It is suggested to apply such multi-level regression analysis in order to estimate the power of both organizational and individual level factors in the “greening” of the Swedish innovation system.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

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Political science

Statsvetenskap

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