The First International Conference on Innovation Studies (ICIS2016) will be hosted by the Research Center for Technological Innovation, Tsinghua University. Selected conference papers will be published by International Journal of Innovation Studies.

The Research Center for Technological Innovation (RCTI) has been pursuing excellence in theoretical research in innovation and in facilitating decision-making at the national, sectorial, regional and firm levels. Being the earliest specialist institute on innovation studies in China, now RCTI has been widely recognized as the premier platform across China on which world-leading scholars can share their insights on future innovation studies. While papers covering a wide array of topics in Innovation Studies will be included in the 2016 program, RCTI especially encourages proposals that cross the boundaries of conventionally defined disciplines.

Different from other conferences in this field, the ICIS2016 event aims to provide a high-end platform for interdisciplinary elite scholars to communicate on the future of innovation and innovation studies. Therefore, the program themes are focused on:

The Nature of Innovation

Innovation is imperative in today’s academic research, but in nature it defies linear analysis and traditional management methods. What are the characteristics of organizations that stimulate successful innovation? What can managers do to create an environment where innovation thrives? How do political leaders and decision makers differentiate between sinkholes and fertile ground when it comes to allocating resources for creative work? How can business harness this illogical, unpredictable force that can be as frustrating as it is valuable? These hard-core challenges are to be tackled seriously in the ICIS2016 program.

Interdisciplinary Insight on Innovation

During its emerging era, the field of innovation studies was populated by “immigrants” from other disciplines. It thus became intrinsically interdisciplinary in nature – an intellectual “melting pot” characterized by diversity and an eclectic borrowing of cognitive resources from others. In the ICIS2016 program, we would like to invite interdisciplinary researchers from economics, sociology, management studies, psychology, etc. to put forth their insights on innovations, so as to promote the incorporation of a broad and heterogeneous mix of research activities, as well as the engagement in fruitful intercourse with social scientists from different disciplines and fields.

The Future of Innovation Studies

In the past 15 years of the 21st century, we have witnessed how innovation changed the world: an earth flattened by the internet and the upheavals in music industry, reading habits and social networking by innovative companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. Yet, innovation studies as the discipline by large failed to update its new research methods regards how to understand the 21st century’s innovations. Thus, in the next 15 years – before 2030 – what can scholars in innovation studies do to follow up future technology and its impacts? In this new era, governments may also need to adopt a more entrepreneurial approach towards innovation policy, thus can researchers in innovation studies provide a better understanding of the interaction between policy-making and innovation activities? ICIS2016 prepares to look forward and to discuss future directions of innovation studies.