The Innovation Journalism Blog “comments on the development of the concept and the community of Innovation Journalism”.

Innovation Journalism is a concept coined in 2003 by David Nordfors. It identifies and reports on key issues in the innovation ecosystems, such as the most important emerging concepts, the interaction between the main actors, or what is happening in innovation value chains. Instead of focusing on certain aspects of innovation processes, it covers innovation itself.

The themes of Innovation Journalism are science and technology trends, intellectual property, finance, standardization, industrial production processes, marketing of new technologies, business models, politics, cultural trends, social impacts. It is multidisciplinary as it treats innovation in the different segments, while what happens in the traditional media is that innovation is treated as a topic within each beat.

The idea was born in one of the most innovative country in Europe: in 2001 a project for introducing Innovation Journalism as a concept and community was initiated by David Nordfors at VINNOVA, the Swedish Government Agency for Innovation Systems.

A Finnish research project of the University of Tampere called “Innovation, Journalism and Future” highlights the fact that social innovations are a relevant topic of innovation journalism. “Innovation refers not only to market introduction of inventions or new technologies but to all such ideas and inventions as an attempt to make something better, whether they are of technological nature or not and whether they will ever be commercialized or not. To be counted as an innovation, however, an idea must have some amount or creativity so that it can be considered new in the context. Thus, the term can potentially be used of any development that has some element of qualitative change in it. By ’social innovations’ we refer to any developments of social or organizational structures, principles or practices, irrespective of who produced the idea.”

The concept is spreading in Europe and has travelled from Scandinavia to the United States, India and Estonia. It has reached Slovenja, a country which has witnessed a rapid growth in the last years. Violeta Bulc, manager of Vibacom, has become a promoter of Innovation Journalism mission in the Balkan region. She believes in the power of the people to be the protagonists of innovation. “We should pay more attention to the space of creativity, tearing down the walls of fear, judgments and discouragements and instead, encouraging the self motivation, self initiation, networking, open space culture, manifestation of the best people have within… and the innovation will follow.”

To follow the development of “InJo” visit the blog of Jan Sandred, the first “innovation journalist” and Program Manager at Innovation Actors Division of VINNOVA. To visit the official InJo website, click here.

E. Delaini

Published: April 27, 2007