Multi-Level Perspective on Geographically-Bound Sectoral Systems of Innovation and the Transition to Open Innovation

For years now, Open Innovation (OI) has been seen as a transformative new paradigm in the development of a new business culture, defined by inter-organisational pursuit of new products and services. However, at the heart of this transition lies a critical challenge – whilst we know what OI change it looks like, it is far less clear as to how is OI actually bringing about such as systemic shift? To try to begin to tackle this fundamental issue, this paper offers a merger between a critical theory of socio-technical system change poised within the science and technology studies (STS), with the innovation studies (IS) flagship theory on innovation as socio-technical system(s). In its findings, this paper outlines a new integrated multi-level perspective (MLP) understanding of modified (geographically-bound) sectoral systems of innovation (GSSI). It advocates a merged framing of the three (sectoral) systems of innovation elements: institutions/socio-technical regimes, actors/networks and socio-technical systems of knowledge/technologies (STSKT) as a symmetrical nested hierarchy within the joined MLP-GSSI framework. Based on studying the transition to OI within the Scottish (New) Space Sector, it proposes that the empirical framings of the new, combined model can be pieced together through studying the macro-level geo-sectoral innovation policy, meso-level Living Labs, and micro-level structural absorptive capacity, the pairs of which are integrated through understanding the innovation intermediaries' interventions typology and the concept of innovation moments.