Promoting Workplace Innovation in an Innovation Policy Context

Abstract

The wider societal impact of workplace innovation development programmes has typically been limited by their poor ability to scale up project outcomes and disseminate good practice. Researchers have proposed different means to address the challenges of diffusion. One of the suggested means is to strengthen the integration of programmes to industrial or innovation policy frameworks, instead of an industrial relations framework. Using the “Finnish Liideri – Business, Productivity and Joy at Work” (2012–18) programme as an object of analysis, this article examines what added value the programme’s attachment to the innovation policy context brought compared to previous Finnish programmes and to what extent this attachment helped to bring new solutions to the challenges of diffusion. The analysis shows that the Liideri programme included many new features compared to previous Finnish programmes, opening up opportunities for more holistic development work in companies. However, based on the data available, it was not possible to give a clear answer to the question of the real added value of this integration to the development of companies or compared with the results of projects funded by previous Finnish workplace innovation development programmes. Concerning the question on dissemination of good practice, the article concludes that, despite its large-scale and high-quality activation work, the Liideri programme did not include sufficiently efficient and innovative measures that would have enabled it to meet better the challenges of diffusion.