The Pragmatist Roots of U.S. Innovation Policy

• In Event: AI, Power, and Political Narratives

Abstract

As is commonly known, in the last few decades the U.S. has been a leader in high-technology innovation, with major advances in many key sectors such as computing, materials science, drug development, and others. It is also well known that U.S. innovation agencies are good at developing and maintaining collaboration structures between companies, universities, and federal research labs that successfully bridge resources and competencies. In this paper, we argue that sociological pragmatism provides an excellent vantage point to provide a more refined understanding of how innovation-oriented agencies in the U.S. manage to stimulate innovation and as a result boost industrial dynamism.

Pragmatists argue that reliable knowledge stems from repeated attempts to solve actual problems. When faced with a problem, humans start with a set of assumptions and devise a solution that is based on those assumptions. But when the solution is applied to empirical reality, discrepancies appear, which need to be resolved by changing assumptions—and so on. Pragmatist thought, then, focuses on decision making and experimentation, i.e., continuous adjustment to ever-changing conditions. To understand pragmatist social action is to chart the succession of chained actions, each taking off where the previous one left off.

We argue that pragmatism is key to understating contemporary innovation because innovation agencies, like typical pragmatist decision makers, operate in a context where they are tasked with solving concrete and often complex problems. Our in-depth analysis of available research shows that several mechanisms that are consistent with a pragmatist perspective have been central to U.S. innovation policy. The first is bricolage, whereby actors use available resources, ideas, and programs, and combine them in creative ways to solve specific problems. A second mechanism, which we call competitive experimentalism, generates solutions by funding many promising ideas, periodically assessing which solutions work, and only continuing to fund those that do. A third mechanism, called generative experimentalism, focuses on a single technology and tries to gradually enhance the technology through continuous feedback loops, changing various aspects one at a time in the pursuit of perfecting it. We find evidence that bricolage and generative experimentalist tools tend to be prevalent in the initial phases of discovering and nurturing new technologies, while competitive experimentalism tends to dominate the later stages of technology expansion and maturation.

In conclusion, the paper issues a cautionary note that although pragmatist practices have been successful in stimulating economic dynamism, the headwinds of market fundamentalism have prevented further advancement through ideological debates that attack governments as incompetent and technology programs as corporate welfare. By describing some of the concrete pragmatist practices that are embedded in the operation of innovation policy makers, we aim to provide information that government officials and programs can use to continue improving stimulating development. In short, a successful approach treats innovation as a problem to be solved and marshals a wide range of pragmatist practices that attempt to surface solutions by continually examining their impact and adapting as needed.

Author

• Marian Negoita, Social Policy Research Associates
  Presenting Author