Research Policy Covers Grand Challenges and Policy

Research Policy has published a special issue on the need for a new generation of policy instruments to respond to the Grand Challenges.

In this issue, Profs Foray, Mowery and Nelsonpresent  an article called "Public R&D and social challenges: What lessons from mission R&D programs?", where they argue that   Manhattan and Apollo are not the right models for new programs aimed at the challenges we now face:

" Nevertheless, mission-oriented R&D programs can be of great value if they are well designed to fit the particular challenge and the context. Second, we believe that familiarity with a range of existing mission oriented R&D programs can provide useful guidance for the design of new programs aimed at these challenges."

Research Policy Special Issue Papers

• "Public R&D and social challenges: What lessons from mission R&D programs?" by D. Foray, D.C. Mowery and R.R. Nelson
• "Defense-related R&D as a model for “Grand Challenges” technology policies" by D.C. Mowery
• "Grand missions of agricultural innovation" by B.D. Wright
• "Mission-oriented biomedical research at the NIH" by B.N. Sampat
• "Missions-oriented RD&D institutions in energy between 2000 and 2010: A comparative analysis of China, the United Kingdom, and the
• United States"by L.D. Anadón
• "Public Procurement for Innovation as mission-oriented innovation policy" by C. Edquist and J.M. Zabala-Iturriagagoitia
• "Which policy instruments to induce clean innovating?" by R. Veugelers
• "Grand Innovation Prizes: A theoretical, normative, and empirical evaluation" by F. Murray, S. Stern, G. Campbell and A. MacCormack

The Beyond STIG mailing list for governace of international STI collaboration for global challenges



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We have set up a mailing list for the dissemination of information of relevance to Beyond STIG.

The mailing list can be used to disseminate information of relevance to the governance of international research and innovation collaboration for meeting global challenges.

If you want your email address added to the list, send an email to me at per.koch@innovationnorway.no.

And no, we will not allow people to use the list for spamming mail boxes.

Per Koch
STIG Chair

EU conference on science and global challenges



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The Irish Precidency of the Council of the European Union  and the European Parliament will arrange a conference on EU Science, Global Challenges and Global Collaboration on March 4 to 8 2013.

The facilitators note that  collaborative science and research and development needs to be enabled by the policy, regulatory, standards and funding environment (parts of the governance dimension as defined by STIG):

"Moreover, research infrastructures and shared capacity building need to be placed at the forefront of measures to support the conduct of R&D globally. The conference will have three elements: plenary sessions; 50 scientific and technical seminars; and 100 project consortium meetings. It is expected that the conference will yield 100 projects involving partners from across 100 countries."

Intelligence in Science has more on the conference.

Programme and presentation.

Presentation of the OECD Project on Governance of STI Co-operation for Global Challenges

By Per Koch, Chair of the OECD STIG project 

Here is a presentation of the results of the OECD project on governance of international science, technology and innovation co-operation for meeting global challenges (STIG).

 This version was made for the recent discussion of STIG at the Royal Society, and for a workshop on the follow up of STIG held at the Imperial College in London on October 30.

 

Daryl Copeland on a virtual community for saving the planet

Daryl Copeland

By Per Koch, Innovation Norway

Daryl Copeland is a Canadian analyst, author, speaker and educator specializing in diplomacy, international policy, public management and global issues. Or, at least, that is what the Wikipedia says. 

For me Daryl is an engaged and challenging discussion partner. He took part in the Oslo workshop on science, technology and innovation for global challenges, and I met him again in London last week, where he took part in the Royal Society presentation of the OECD STIG project and the following Imperial College workshop om the follow up to STIG: 

In a very interesting blog post over at the Canadian iPolitics site, Daryl presents the STIG project and discusses why this topic has not gotten the traction it deserves internationally. 

He points to several factors: Civil servants lacking the resources needed to follow up is one of them. The financial crisis has directed their attention elsewhere. Moreover, Daryl also argues that the foreign offices are  poorly equipped to follow up with relevant science diplomacy.

Daryl's conclusion is that we have to reach out outside the science and policy circles to generate more interest. He says:

"OECD reports are rarely read outside of specialized circles, and the STIG document lacks a public communication dimension. In that regard, perhaps best way to popularize, and ultimately to politicize the project, would be to orchestrate an outreach campaign using new media venues with a view to attracting STIG advocates from across global civil society. By generating a critical mass of that sort, governments and international organizations might be spurred into taking the urgent remedial action which the circumstances require."

He believes the social web can be used to disseminate and discuss STIG issues. He argues that we should establish a web portal that could gather new and existing online activities.  And if the public authorities are not willing to fund such a platform, maybe some private philanthropists could contribute. 

Daryl mentions Google. Anyone else?

See also Daryl's post on the Oslo STIG workshop over at The Huffington Post. 

per.koch@innovationnorway.no twitter: @perkoch

The OECD Report on Governance of International Co-operation in Science, Technology and Innovation is Available

By Per Koch, Innovation Norway

The world community is facing many urgent challenges that require our attention, like climate change, global health, food security and more.

Science, technology and innovation will play an important role in meeting these challenges, not only in the sense of providing technology that can be used to alleviate some of the problems, but also because STI may help us understand the underlying social, cultural, technological and environmental processes causing the problems.

OECD's Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy established a special Steering Group on International Co-operation on Science, Technology and Innovation for Global Challenges (STIG) to explore the governance frameworks of international STI collaboration in this field. I had the honor and pleasure of chairing this group.

Note that the point of this exercise was not to provide analysis of the concrete challenges, but to study and give recommendation on how international collaboration of this sort may be carried out. In other words: The main focus was on the governance of STI collaboration.

In June this year we presented the final report, called Meeting Global Challenges through Better Governance. A summary of the report can be found over at the OECD web site. 

The Oslo Workshop on International Co-operation in Science, Technology and Innovation to Address Global Challenges

The Oslo Workshop on International Co-operation in Science, Technology and Innovation to Address Global Challenges took place in Oslo on May 18 to 20, 2011. This is the program of that even, with links to Powerpoint-presentations.

The workshop was hosted by The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in collaboration with OECD and the Research Council of Norway as part of the Norwegian Year of Science.

The need for efficient governance of International STI collaboration

The economic challenges of ensuring fiscal consolidation, economic restructuring and re-starting growth coincides with increasing political pressure to meet various social challenges, such as climate change, energy supply, clean water, infectious and neglected diseases, ageing and demographic change and food security.

These challenges are typically global in nature and cannot be dealt with alone by any country. They need to be addressed at a global level, and science, technology and innovation (STI) are essential to do so effectively.

Current policy frameworks and governance mechanisms for international co-operation exist for specific purposes and for different settings, but they often fall short of adequately supporting broad-based collaborative action at the scale, intensity and multi-disciplinarity required. New approaches and models for international collaboration need to be developed.

The Oslo workshop was to provide input to the OECD project on Governance of International Co-operation on STI for Global Challenges (STIG).