Governance of Urban Innovation: Developing and Testing an Assessment Instrument

This paper sets out to develop an assessment instrument for the governance of urban innovation. The assessment instrument is based upon innovation systems theory and translates this theoretical perspective to public sector... [ view full abstract ]

This paper sets out to develop an assessment instrument for the governance of urban innovation. The assessment instrument is based upon innovation systems theory and translates this theoretical perspective to public sector innovation to develop a functional model of the governance of urban innovation system. Five functions are identified as being crucial to the governance of urban innovation systems: mobilizing, improvising, vitalizing, balancing and coordinating. The functions are operationalized to construct an assessment instrument. This instrument in tested by using it to assess the governance of urban innovation in the City of Utrecht in the Netherlands. This test shows that the instrument helps to identify weaknesses in the governance of urban innovation and provides a basis for further development of this form of governance. At the same time, the test highlights that the focus on rich information makes the instrument less useful for quantitative assessment and benchmarking. The key contribution of the paper to the literature is that it shows how the governance of urban innovation can be modelled and assessed.