Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
The International Conference on Innovation, Technology, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, Manama, Bahreyn, 26 - 27 Kasım 2019, ss.3-12
Construction plays a crucial role in Turkey’s economic development, accounting for nearly 8-9% of GDP.
The growing global competitiveness of Turkish contractors also contributes significantly to the balance of
payments of Turkey. It is widely acknowledged that competitiveness of firms depends on national
“innovation systems,” that is shaped by government policy, and an innovation vision is needed at the
industry-level as well as supporting mechanisms such as funding schemes for research and development
in the priority areas, and platforms to enable knowledge transfer between various stakeholders. In this
paper, we will discuss the innovation vision within the Turkish construction industry, by referring to various
construction industry-specific reports. Specifically, we will investigate the vision and conceptualization of
innovation in the “Construction Industry Roadmap” as a part of the 10th Development Plan that was
prepared by the Turkish Ministry of Development. A comparative study has been carried out between this
report and a white paper entitled as “Shaping the Future of Construction: Insights to redesign the industry”
that was prepared by the World Economic Forum (WEF) by conducting a content analysis using NVivo.
Although the content of two documents in terms of the “drivers” and “enablers” of innovation coincides to
a large extent, the innovation was approached in a broader sense considering concepts such as “systemic
innovation”, “lessons learned”, “disruptive innovation”, “eco-innovation”, “incremental innovation” and
“open source innovation” in the WEF’s report. Potential benefits of looking at the innovation system from
a wider lens will be discussed as well as recommendations for further studies.