What The Devil Wears Prada and transformative innovation policy have in common – Reflections from EU-SPRI 2025

Author: Lina Svensberg

There’s a scene in The Devil Wears Prada, a movie I haven’t seen in 15 years, that suddenly popped into my head during the Eu-SPRI Forum Conference I just attended. Anne Hathaway’s character, Andy, is an aspiring journalist who ends up working for the famous (and scary) fashion editor Miranda Priestly. In one scene, Andy looks sceptical during what seems like an absurd debate over two nearly identical belts. Miranda then explains how Andy’s supposedly “neutral” blue sweater is actually cerulean – a colour that Oscar de la Renta used in a key collection, which then influenced designers, manufacturers, and eventually filtered down into discount stores.

What Andy thought was a personal and independent choice was actually shaped by a whole chain of aesthetic, economic, and strategic decisions – made way above her head.

I thought of that scene because it reminded me of how it felt when I first entered the world of the project-funded innovation system.

When I started at the Compare Foundation, over seven years ago, straight from a teleradiology scale-up, I had barely heard of Vinnova or ERDF. I’d never seen a project application in my life. Compare had just had a three-year project approved and was putting together a team – I was one of them.

I don’t know how many times I read that project application in the first months, trying to understand what we were actually supposed to do. Work packages, activities and indicators… and it all seemed to relate to other documents and strategies. One of them was called Smart Specialisation and seemed important. It was far away from the business logic I was used to.

Bit by bit, I got used to the terminology and the logic. But as soon as I felt I had figured something out, there was always something more. State aid, economic vs non-economic activity, and GBER articles. VINNVÄXT and Horizon. Different programmes and funds with different logic. Different regional, national, and European priorities. It felt just as difficult to navigate the context as to answer the dreaded question: “So… what do you actually work with?”

The first day of EU-SPRI, listening to a brilliant keynote from Uwe Cantner, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, on the role of the state in transformative innovation, I realised how much harder it is to figure out the worlds of innovation policy when you start at the bottom of the value chain, as I had done, just as many other practitioners. When you see people debating over two nearly identical belts. (Or State aid boxes. Or indicators.)

For me, it took years to even realize that there was a value chain – how the way we design and report projects is shaped by how calls are written, which are shaped by high-level strategies, which are shaped by evolving ideas of how policy is supposed to work. And how those ideas, in turn, are shaped by changes in society.

It’s a bit like a chain of Chinese whispers. As project manager, you try to interpret what the person writing the application meant – who tried to interpret what the person writing the call meant – who was trying to reflect the strategy they were given. And at the end of the project, indicators are gathered and sent back up the chain – hopefully showing that something happened that resembles the original intent behind the policy.

And of course it takes years to whisper a message from one end of the chain to the other.

That’s one of the reasons why I think we need to close the gap between policy researchers, policymakers, policy practitioners and practitioners, within STI. And that’s also why I really enjoy EU-SPRI – because it helps me shift perspective. To see my own work and my own organisation from another point of view. To listen to a keynote about the role of the state in transformative innovation and how those ideas have evolved over the decades. To follow a panel on the development of FP10, the next new European R&I Framework Programme, due to start in 2028, to follow the current framework programme, Horizon Europe. To sit in sessions where researchers and policymakers share their piece of the puzzle.

What kind of indicators actually say something about transformative change? Since missions rarely implement themselves after being formulated, shouldn’t we focus more on theory of action, alongside theory of change? And how could you map transformative outcomes in Industry 5.0?

One theme I found particularly relevant was all the discussions about possible trade-offs and tensions between agendas – thanks to Len for helping me put words to that. Between regional, national, and European priorities. Between competitiveness and sustainable development. Between transformative innovation policy and industrial policy. Between openness and security risks. So many of the issues we, as practitioners, face every day are also being explored by researchers and policymakers, each from their own angle.

In one session, I presented a white paper I co-authored with Kjell Håkan Närfelt from Vinnova. The session was part of the track Effectiveness and limitations of public procurement in achieving the intersecting policy goals of a changing Europe, arranged by Anne Rainville, PhD, Universiteit Utrecht and Elvira Uyarra, Manchester Institute Of Innovation Research, among others.

Maria Merisalo, from VTT, opened the session with a paper on how public buyers’ practices for scaling innovations through procurement. I followed with our white paper, introducing scalability as a new perspective on innovation procurement – based on insights from developing and implementing the Demand Acceleration Framework, including the need for a new kind of intermediary roles.

The final presentation, by Katriina Alhola from the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) – Suomen ympäristökeskus (Syke), shared findings from KEINO Competence Center, including a typology of intermediary roles they had identified in their research. It turned into a really engaged and interesting session, where both scalability and intermediary roles were discussed from different perspectives – where insights from practice and theory fertilized each other.

When I try to summarise this year’s EU-SPRI Conference, what stays with me are all the conversations. In sessions, over coffee, during breakfast, and on evening walks through Dortmund. The curiosity. The openness. The exchange of perspectives. That space in between research, policy and practice.

And I feel that my inner Anne Hathaway is starting to understand a bit more about why that blue sweater is hanging in her wardrobe.

On my wishlist going forward:

• A course or training: Transformative Innovation Policy for Beginners. For all the Anne Hathaways out there – and I’ll be the first to sign up. Not just GBER articles or “which regions are part of NUTS3” but starting with why. Why do states fund research and innovation? What are the ideas behind that – and how have they evolved? It’s so much easier to navigate programme structures and administrative red tape when you understand the underlying ideas behind it.
• More forums where policymakers, researchers and practitioners in the transformative innovation policy value chain can meet, think, and reason together. More conversation, less Chinese whispers.

Many thanks to everyone for all the inspiring conversations – in and outside the sessions. I hope to see many of you again next year, and in all the other forums, meetings and side streets where these discussions continue to unfold.

Over and out!