Gender and innovation in Norway

GENINNO: Gender and innovation in Norway In the GENINNO-project we start out by analysing the texts that are produced in VRI: collaboration applications, research applications, reports from these and program-plans and other policy documents. We use texts from all three VRI-periods. We have data on what the actors say they will do (plans and applications), what they say they have done (reports) and what frames they have to relate to (program plans and policy documents). Based on this material the aim with GENINNO is to understand how gender and innovation are interpreted, and what role gender has in the VRI-projects. The research project develop knowledge and understanding on what role gender plays in innovation in the VRI-context. Our point of departure is that gender is one of the basic organizational principles in society, and that this also holds true for the innovation field. Previous research has shown a significant gender imbalance regarding participation in different innovation related fields. Men dominate as innovators, as policymakers and in the public support system, and as innovation researchers and knowledge producers. In spite of this, innovation has been regarded as a gender neutral activity. And neither innovation research nor policy have been pre-occupied with gender balance or gender equality. However, the VRI-program has almost from its very beginning had a focus on gender and the VRI-secretariat has in different ways tried to get the VRI-regions to somehow include gender in their applications, i.e. projects. This has primarily been done by demanding gender balance in the VRI-governance structure. The implication has been that ?Women are wanted? (Kvidal & Ljunggren, 2016) because it has been acknowledged that women lack in almost all parts of the triple helices. In some of the GENINNO research we have applied the model 'entrepreneurial ecosystems'. A simplistic explanation of this is that one can see regions as ecosystems, and the different parts of the system need to co-operate to achieve entrepreneurial activity - here understood as innovation. One applies the ecosystem model to investigate how the different actors, their networks and their infrastructure co-operate (or not). We perceive the VRI-regions to be entrepreneurial ecosystems. We find that the demand on gender balance, i.e. more women, comes from outside the ecosystem, from the VRI-secretariat. In some regions this demand contributes to a larger insight in the challenges the regions face when they try to achieve gender balance. During the VRI-years data show that some few regions realise that they lack the knowledge on how to advance the gender balance. Some insight in what to gain by involving more women in the entrepreneurial ecosystem are found in the public part of the ecosystem (or the triple helix), while the private part don?t have this as an issue. However, we need to be cautious that our data to a lesser degree covers this part of the ecosystem. The knowledge infrastructure, the research partners, do not deliver the necessary knowledge, both because it isn't asked for and probably they don't have the knowledge themselves. When we analyse the policy implementation we find that there is little coherence between policy goals (i.e. more women in innovation), the activities and the demand on the reporting. Looking into the different levels in the ecosystems; the industries, the firms and the individuals, we find that the innovation policy has some interventions at the industry and firm levels, while at the individual level the only activity is counting men and women when reporting. It is therefore few interventions to get women into the ecosystem. Autio (2015) suggests four key postulates for an efficient ecosystem policy- and VRI only answer to one of them: the co-operation embedded in the projects that aims to get more actors to work together with the aim to promote innovation activities. The three other suggestions for an efficient entrepreneurial ecosystem policy: 1) a bottom-up policy,2) engagement from stakeholders (on gender balance in innovation systems) and 3) build sufficient collective impact through commitment and mutual awareness among stakeholders, the VRI-system fails. One of the core challenges is that most actors in the ecosystems do not understand or perceive how gender balance and/or gender equality can contribute to their goals - which we assume are more and better innovations.

The main objectives of the VRI programme are to develop knowledge and skills related to collaborative and innovative processes regionally, and to promote research-based innovation. Almost from the start, the VRI programme was required to include a gender perspective when striving toward these goals. VRI aim at a gender balanced participation at all levels and processes of the programme, and all VRI activities should be conscious on how choices made impact women and men. This has been challenging for VRI b oth at the programme and regional levels. Project leaders and regional VRI boards have struggled when searching for strategies and tools to address these aims. The struggle is rooted in the lack of knowledge on the role of gender in innovation, and subseq uently a lack of tools available. GENINNO addresses these challenges by analysing the strategies and activities taken by VRI actors working with these aims, and learning from them. Thereby, we contribute to the understanding of the role of gender in (VRI related) innovation projects; an understanding which gives an important knowledge base for the development of tools, strategies and policies suitable for addressing gender-related aims in schemes such as VRI. GENINNO aims at developing knowledge from VRI experiences, by taking a gender perspective in analysing, comparing and synthesizing projects and results created in VRI. We address the knowledge gap on gender and innovation by using discourse analyses as a tool. We seek to extract knowledge from the VR I texts, e.g. project descriptions, progress and results reports, research based texts and other documents, taking a gender perspective. The findings from GENINNO will be disseminated through reflexive workshops at regional and national levels where the p articipants are invited to reflect and contribute to solving "the gender issue" in VRI. The results will be presented at research conferences and in journal articles, and in popular science outlets and presentations