Governing Innovation Paths in Regenerative Medicine: The European and Global Struggle for Political Advantage

Abstract

Over the last decade, ‘innovation’ has acquired an iconic status in the pantheon of state policies as governments compete for access to the knowledge economies of the future through a search for the appropriate alchemy of innovation governance. Propelled by the imperatives of globalisation, the expectations of their populations and the geopolitics of inter-state competition for future economic territories, ambitious governments have uniformly come to regard innovation policy as the key to unlocking the potential offered by the advancement of science. With the advent of the emerging economies of the developing world, we see an added political impetus as countries such as China, India, and Brazil have aggressively moved to establish their own innovation platforms. In their turn, the developed countries of North America, Europe, and Japan are well aware that they must respond to the challenge posed by the emerging economies to their traditional leadership of scientific innovation.