Journal article

Publication year: 2023

Journal: Technovation

Volume number: 122

ISSN: 0166-4972

eISSN: 1879-2383

Open access status: Hybrid

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2022.102581

Publisher: Elsevier

Abstract: 
Research and development (R&D) is frequently touted and labelled as the fundamental engine for creating sustainable innovations and achieving climate transitions. Yet, recent R&D efforts have struggled to live up to the widespread life-altering results they delivered in the 1960s when the term R&D was coined. In our attempt to address this concern, we propose a sustainability pathway model to achieving an economically viable innovation system that is anchored in three important pointers of R&D which have long been viewed as mutually distinct components in R&D budgets-investment, talent, and learning institutions. Directing attention to the pervasive need to align R&D investments with talents and learning institutions, we delineate how these pointers of R&D coming together to constitute a trivalent force may drive a growth-boosting sustainable innovation system. While there is no simple recipe which suggests an optimal combination of new scientific understanding, technologies, and process that could help produce the much-needed innovations and technological change, we present a set of propositions that highlights opportunities for reflection on existing R&D investment strategies and serves as a bridge to connect the emergent scholarship on sustainability with the intellectual traditions of R&D in innovation management.

Harvard Citation style: Sarpong, D., Boakye, D., Ofosu, G. and Botchie, D. (2023) The three pointers of research and development (R&D) for growth-boosting sustainable innovation system, Technovation, 122, Article 102581. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2022.102581

APA Citation style: Sarpong, D., Boakye, D., Ofosu, G., & Botchie, D. (2023). The three pointers of research and development (R&D) for growth-boosting sustainable innovation system. Technovation. 122, Article 102581. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2022.102581