Abstract

Public and scholarly debates have often suggested that a "market-conforming" innovation policy should act "on demand", responding to the actual, perceived needs of companies rather than to biased, political imperatives. This contrasts with the increasing attention by contemporary marketing to the "hidden needs" of customers. This paper suggests a vision of innovation policy that is based on the management of policy networks and on an extended "second-generation" toolbox. We confront innovation policy requirements with marketing approaches such as the marketing of innovation, industrial marketing, service marketing and relationship marketing. It is suggested that marketing not only can supply innovation policies with specific techniques, but may contribute to deal with more essential problems in innovation policy, like need assessment, risk acceptance, subsidiarity and targeting.