Signing for Global Partnership on Innovation Policy
The first stage of an international partnership that has at its heart transforming innovation policy to solve critical societal issues, launched on the opening day of SPRU’s 50th Anniversary Conference. Alongside SPRU, the participating partners in the pilot stage of the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) are Department of Science, Technology and Innovation – Colciencias, Colombia; National Research Foundation, (NRF) South Africa; and The Research Council (RCN) of Norway.
Those signing an Expression of Interest were: Chinese Academy for Science and Technology Development – CASTED; the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems – VINNOVA and the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation – Tekes.
TIPC brings together these significant global actors to examine and research their respective innovation systems to explore the future of policy – its ‘foundation, formulation and governance’. This knowledge and learning will then be implemented to help address societal issues to promote a sustainable and stable future.
The Consortium’s key objective is to assess and expand on current innovation frames and their approaches developing a theory termed Innovation Policy 3.0, to assist in tackling urgent social and economic concerns. Partners have committed to the Consortium to enable joint resource, working and learning to progress new innovation theories and practices with key deliverables and outcomes which seek to solve the critical problems of our time: climate change, inequality, employment and future growth. This is a challenge for both the Global North and the Global South. Alongside other associated ‘policy mixes’, which may include elements from the first two frames, TIPC aims to shape and deliver a new innovation policy framework, importantly, in a transdisciplinary way. The Consortium will interface between the worlds of research, business, government, media and civil society. During the process all participants are positioned as active co-researchers and co-policy designers. SPRU has been at the forefront of this collaborative, interdisciplinary, action-driven research for 50 years – the signing of this Consortium agreement demonstrates it continues to do so into its, and the globe’s, next age. Johan Schot, Director of SPRU explains:
“The Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium intends to drive the thinking about the future of science, technology and innovation policy, its creation and its application. It is based on the urgent need for STI policies to address the central issues of our time including inequality and climate change. I am very pleased it is a global consortium with representative from Latin America, Africa, China and Europe. Mutual learning will be central to the work.”
Ed Steinmueller, Professor of Information & Communication Technology Policy, who collaborated on the research that informs the Consortium said:
‘In 40 years of working as a researcher on innovation policy issues, the Consortium is a fresh and innovative approach to combining expertise and achieving mutual learning. I am optimistic that it will yield promising new approaches to the policy challenges we all face.’
Further information:
Visit the TIPC page to gain further insight on the three frames of innovation and to view the research papers on which the Consortium is based.
Sign-up to register interest and stay in touch with the activities and outcomes.
View the TIPC announcement highlight and others from the SPRU 50th conference on Storify
See the full keynote outlining the thinking and research papers behind the Consortium (45 mins).
Short on time? A snapshot of Schot’s Opening Keynote with the announcement and signing is below.
The presentation slides for the keynote ‘Research & Policy Agenda For a World in Transition’ can be viewed below.