Avenues for public actors to enable and promote innovating and innovation

The ways and means for public actors to promote innovation and innovating remain uncharted. This concerns issues such as the actual capability of public organizations to promote innovations, the utilization of external knowledge in public innovation actions, and the means to co-create with private actors. The chapter sets up the scene for public involvement in creating the best possible innovation environment for public and private innovators alike by considering the following questions: (a) Through which interfaces and actor roles do public involvement in innovating and innovations happen? (b) What means does a public actor have for creating and facilitating avenues for innovation? The chapter focuses on the concept of an innovation ecosystem – a network of public and/or private actors with an innovative mindset and resources such as knowledge, competence, technologies, or physical materials – and shows the wide range of means and roles public actors have for promoting innovating. The chapter provides six public actor roles (organizer, operator, financer, policymaker, regulator, supporter) for enhancing innovations and four interfaces (ownership, financing, authority, research and development support) for public involvement in innovating in the 2020s. Furthermore, ecosystem mapping is presented as one potential tool for public actors to recognize and make visible the existing actors, resources, and relations within an innovation ecosystem. Finally, the chapter highlights several avenues (e.g., public data sources, procurements, and regulation) through which public involvement in innovating can happen as public–public, public–private, or private–private co-creation.