This chapter constitutes a concise and integrated overview of innovation policy as a diverse and contested, strictly interdisciplinary social-scientific research field. It is shown how, among other things, innovation policy research has been decisively interacting with the trajectories of more abstract discourses in innovation studies and political economy for decades. Most importantly, linear models of innovation processes increasingly give way to more complex approaches such as those to innovation systems with different quite substantive shifts in both policy analysis and policy implications. It also appears that recently, the importance of ideas and discourses in the policy process is receiving increasing attention, as much as the role of underlying conflicts, in understanding the dynamics of innovation in sectors, regions, and national economies. With promising insights, recent academic debates include broader and deeper sociological causalities in their explanations for innovation, leading to further implications for both understanding and improving innovation policy. This is not least of vital importance in order to access what some see as a built-in resilience mechanism of “innovation society” in tackling contemporary “grand challenges,” and for managing the corresponding transitions effectively and justly.