Iris Wanzenböck
Biographic Data
| ID | 233271 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Iris Wanzenböck |
| GIVEN NAMES | Iris |
| FAMILY NAME | Wanzenböck |
| SIGNATURE | WANZENBÖCK I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Utrecht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1727-5567 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2027 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Policy-as-practice
While research on the politics of transitions has examined power dynamics, coalitions, and value contestations, the ‘hidden’ sides of operational governance, such as micro-political dynamics, strategies and tensions within decision-making spaces, remained largely underexplored. Considering the increased attention to politics in the governance of sustainability transitions, we argue for a better understanding of the complex, often messy policy pro…
European energy resilience in the face of the Russo-Ukrainian war
This study examines how energy resilience was discursively constructed in EU media debates during the energy crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and explores the implications of these constructions for Europe's sustainable energy transition. Existing research has primarily focused on energy security concerns, policy shifts and changing transition priorities following the Russo-Ukrainian war. Building on this literature, we ad…
Unpacking lock-ins in transition pathways
Societal mission-oriented policies are shaped by the socio-technical systems in which they are embedded, yet their openness to multiple transition pathways, particularly when a dominant one exists, is underexplored. This study addresses this gap through a qualitative case study of the circular plastic packaging mission in the Netherlands. We analyse the interaction between the mission and socio-technical system dynamics across three circular tran…
Unpacking normativity in transformative change
Normativity in sustainability transitions requires explicit study. • We analyze policy problem frames, solutions and their underlying political-ideological values. • We show a prevalence of economic values in directionality of Dutch and Norwegian agri-food history. • Our value-based policy analysis offers a valuable contribution to unpack normativity. • Just transitions require critical reflexivity to balance social, ecological and economic value…
What are transformative missions, really? Three dimensions for one shared understanding
Innovation policy debates increasingly position missions as a means to induce, direct, and accelerate socio-technical transformation in response to persistent societal challenges. Along with their growing popularity, critiques of missions question their potential to deliver on stated and projected promises. This raises the question of what it fundamentally means for missions to be transformative. We believe that a more nuanced perspective is need…
Conceptualizing the relationship between industrial transformation and accelerating sustainability transitions
The acceleration of sustainability transitions increasingly hinges on industrial transformation, i.e., structural changes in the sectors that produce, use, and support low-carbon technologies. Such changes shape the pace and direction of transitions by affecting the availability of critical inputs—from manufacturing capacity to materials for batteries, transformers, or solar PV—and by creating new opportunities for industrial value creation. Yet …
Mission-oriented innovation
Geographies of mission-oriented innovation policy
Small wins for grand challenges. A bottom-up governance approach to regional innovation policy
Grand societal challenges as a policy target have received increasing attention in regional innovation policy. To date, concrete governance strategies to address such challenges with local solutions are underexplored. We propose a small wins approach as a new governance strategy to deal with wicked societal problems. A small wins strategy focuses on accelerating bottom-up initiatives guided by a shared mission. The aim is to activate propelling m…
Towards a problem-oriented regional industrial policy
Thinking about regional industrial policies remains focused on the supply of new knowledge, and recently also on grand challenges and missions, but takes problems, demand and market formation largely for granted. In this paper we build on policy sciences, sociology of markets and valuation approaches to explore the place-based roles of agency, institutions, networks and values in discursive processes of problem-framing and market creation. We ide…
The subsidiarity principle in innovation policy for societal challenges
While national governments are the main actors in innovation policy, we witness a proliferation of challenge-oriented innovation policies both at the subnational and the supranational level. This begs the question about subsidiarity: what innovation policies for societal challenges should be organized at subnational, national and supranational levels? We provide arguments that innovation policies aimed to solve societal challenges, such as climat…
Proposal success in Horizon 2020
This study draws on evaluation data to investigate the success of collaborative R&D project proposals submitted to Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (FP). Data on project status and evaluation score are used to identify successful and rejected project proposals. We hypothesize that the social or institutional composition of the project consortium explains the outcome of an early-stage R&D collabora…
Impacts of EU funded R&D networks on the generation of key enabling technologies
Cross-regional R&D networks are essential for regional innovativeness. Yet, we lack insights into technology field-specific effects of a region's network connectivity. This study investigates key enabling technologies (KETs) to compare knowledge creation effects of EU funded R&D networks for different technological fields. By applying spatially filtered regression models together with marginal effect interpretations for non-linear models we quant…
A concept for measuring network proximity of regions in R&D networks
Centrality of regions in R&D networks
Centrality of regions in R&D networks: a new measurement approach using the concept of bridging paths. Regional Studies. This paper introduces a novel measure of regional centrality in the context of research and development (R&D) networks. It first demonstrates some substantial problems of social network analysis (SNA)-based centrality measures to cope with regional R&D networks in a meaningful way. It then proposes a new measurement approach of…
R&D networks and regional knowledge production in Europe
Embeddedness of European Regions in European Union-Funded Research and Development (R&D) Networks
Wanzenböck I., Scherngell T. and Lata R. Embeddedness of European regions in European Union-funded research and development (R&D) networks: a spatial econometric perspective, Regional Studies. This study focuses on the embeddedness of regions in research and development (R&D) networks within European Union Framework Programmes by estimating how distinct regional factors affect a region's network positioning. Graph theoretic centrality measures in…
Towards a problem-oriented regional industrial policy
Thinking about regional industrial policies remains focused on the supply of new knowledge, and recently also on grand challenges and missions, but takes problems, demand and market formation largely for granted. In this paper we build on policy sciences, sociology of markets and valuation approaches to explore the place-based roles of agency, institutions, networks and values in discursive processes of problem-framing and market creation. We ide…
Embeddedness of European Regions in European Union-Funded Research and Development (R&D) Networks
Wanzenböck I., Scherngell T. and Lata R. Embeddedness of European regions in European Union-funded research and development (R&D) networks: a spatial econometric perspective, Regional Studies. This study focuses on the embeddedness of regions in research and development (R&D) networks within European Union Framework Programmes by estimating how distinct regional factors affect a region's network positioning. Graph theoretic centrality measures in…
Geographies of mission-oriented innovation policy
Centrality of regions in R&D networks
Centrality of regions in R&D networks: a new measurement approach using the concept of bridging paths. Regional Studies. This paper introduces a novel measure of regional centrality in the context of research and development (R&D) networks. It first demonstrates some substantial problems of social network analysis (SNA)-based centrality measures to cope with regional R&D networks in a meaningful way. It then proposes a new measurement approach of…
R&D networks and regional knowledge production in Europe
Mission-oriented innovation
Embeddedness of European Regions in European Union-Funded Research and Development (R&D) Networks
Wanzenböck I., Scherngell T. and Lata R. Embeddedness of European regions in European Union-funded research and development (R&D) networks: a spatial econometric perspective, Regional Studies. This study focuses on the embeddedness of regions in research and development (R&D) networks within European Union Framework Programmes by estimating how distinct regional factors affect a region's network positioning. Graph theoretic centrality measures in…
R&D networks and regional knowledge production in Europe
A concept for measuring network proximity of regions in R&D networks
Centrality of regions in R&D networks
Centrality of regions in R&D networks: a new measurement approach using the concept of bridging paths. Regional Studies. This paper introduces a novel measure of regional centrality in the context of research and development (R&D) networks. It first demonstrates some substantial problems of social network analysis (SNA)-based centrality measures to cope with regional R&D networks in a meaningful way. It then proposes a new measurement approach of…
Impacts of EU funded R&D networks on the generation of key enabling technologies
Cross-regional R&D networks are essential for regional innovativeness. Yet, we lack insights into technology field-specific effects of a region's network connectivity. This study investigates key enabling technologies (KETs) to compare knowledge creation effects of EU funded R&D networks for different technological fields. By applying spatially filtered regression models together with marginal effect interpretations for non-linear models we quant…
The subsidiarity principle in innovation policy for societal challenges
While national governments are the main actors in innovation policy, we witness a proliferation of challenge-oriented innovation policies both at the subnational and the supranational level. This begs the question about subsidiarity: what innovation policies for societal challenges should be organized at subnational, national and supranational levels? We provide arguments that innovation policies aimed to solve societal challenges, such as climat…
Proposal success in Horizon 2020
This study draws on evaluation data to investigate the success of collaborative R&D project proposals submitted to Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (FP). Data on project status and evaluation score are used to identify successful and rejected project proposals. We hypothesize that the social or institutional composition of the project consortium explains the outcome of an early-stage R&D collabora…
Small wins for grand challenges. A bottom-up governance approach to regional innovation policy
Grand societal challenges as a policy target have received increasing attention in regional innovation policy. To date, concrete governance strategies to address such challenges with local solutions are underexplored. We propose a small wins approach as a new governance strategy to deal with wicked societal problems. A small wins strategy focuses on accelerating bottom-up initiatives guided by a shared mission. The aim is to activate propelling m…
Towards a problem-oriented regional industrial policy
Thinking about regional industrial policies remains focused on the supply of new knowledge, and recently also on grand challenges and missions, but takes problems, demand and market formation largely for granted. In this paper we build on policy sciences, sociology of markets and valuation approaches to explore the place-based roles of agency, institutions, networks and values in discursive processes of problem-framing and market creation. We ide…
Conceptualizing the relationship between industrial transformation and accelerating sustainability transitions
The acceleration of sustainability transitions increasingly hinges on industrial transformation, i.e., structural changes in the sectors that produce, use, and support low-carbon technologies. Such changes shape the pace and direction of transitions by affecting the availability of critical inputs—from manufacturing capacity to materials for batteries, transformers, or solar PV—and by creating new opportunities for industrial value creation. Yet …
Mission-oriented innovation
Geographies of mission-oriented innovation policy
European energy resilience in the face of the Russo-Ukrainian war
This study examines how energy resilience was discursively constructed in EU media debates during the energy crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and explores the implications of these constructions for Europe's sustainable energy transition. Existing research has primarily focused on energy security concerns, policy shifts and changing transition priorities following the Russo-Ukrainian war. Building on this literature, we ad…
Unpacking lock-ins in transition pathways
Societal mission-oriented policies are shaped by the socio-technical systems in which they are embedded, yet their openness to multiple transition pathways, particularly when a dominant one exists, is underexplored. This study addresses this gap through a qualitative case study of the circular plastic packaging mission in the Netherlands. We analyse the interaction between the mission and socio-technical system dynamics across three circular tran…
Unpacking normativity in transformative change
Normativity in sustainability transitions requires explicit study. • We analyze policy problem frames, solutions and their underlying political-ideological values. • We show a prevalence of economic values in directionality of Dutch and Norwegian agri-food history. • Our value-based policy analysis offers a valuable contribution to unpack normativity. • Just transitions require critical reflexivity to balance social, ecological and economic value…
What are transformative missions, really? Three dimensions for one shared understanding
Innovation policy debates increasingly position missions as a means to induce, direct, and accelerate socio-technical transformation in response to persistent societal challenges. Along with their growing popularity, critiques of missions question their potential to deliver on stated and projected promises. This raises the question of what it fundamentally means for missions to be transformative. We believe that a more nuanced perspective is need…
Policy-as-practice
While research on the politics of transitions has examined power dynamics, coalitions, and value contestations, the ‘hidden’ sides of operational governance, such as micro-political dynamics, strategies and tensions within decision-making spaces, remained largely underexplored. Considering the increased attention to politics in the governance of sustainability transitions, we argue for a better understanding of the complex, often messy policy pro…
Regional Development and Policy (9 works) · Business (8 works) · Economics (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Innovation and Knowledge Management (6 works) · Regional science (6 works) · Geography (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (5 works)