Sti Policy

The Arab world stretches from the Indian Ocean in the
East to the Atlantic Ocean in the West. Twenty Arab
countries occupy the southern and eastern shores of the
Mediterranean and border the Red Sea.
It is an area of historical importance, as it is the birthplace
of the world’s three Abrahamic religions. For centuries, the
region was a hub of groundbreaking science. It is of
contemporary strategic importance owing to its location
and a wealth of subterranean natural resources, essentially
in the form of oil and natural gas – 32% of the world’s
known natural gas reserves are to be found in the region –
as well as phosphate: Morocco alone possesses more than
half of the world’s reserves.
The region encompasses remarkable cultural similarities as
well as highly distinct political and economic systems with a
heterogeneous social fabric. Its peoples share a commonality
of language, history and religion but their societies are at
variance in terms of natural wealth, governance, currency,
traditions and socio-economic systems.
The period since the UNESCO Science Report 2005
appeared has been one of mixed fortunes for Arab
countries. The region has witnessed continuing political
upheaval and military conflict in the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank, Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan. The oil-exporting
Arab states of Kuwait, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have enjoyed a
short-lived downpour of revenue resulting from the hike
in international oil prices to a peak of more than US$ 140 a
barrel in July 2008. Conversely, oil-importing countries
such as Jordan, Tunisia and Morocco have faced fiscal
difficulties due to their mounting national energy bills, a
situation compounded by the associated rise in the cost of
imported food commodities.
The subsequent plummet in oil prices, which fell to about
US$ 40 by the end of 2008 before recovering slightly in
2009, has brought this exceptional situation to an end.
It has also highlighted the volatility of oil prices and the
need for Arab oil-exporting countries to diversify their
economies in future.
Notwithstanding these difficulties, the same period also
witnessed renewed interest on the part of many Arab
countries in reinvigorating science and technology (S&T)
and higher education, with the launch of a number of topdown
initiatives to support education and research. Some
of these will be highlighted in the present chapter. A
handful of countries have also approved plans to allocate
more resources to research and development (R&D),
among them Egypt, Tunisia and Qatar.
The current global economic recession may not affect
Arab states in the immediate term, as the banking sector
in the majority of Arab states is highly regulated and only
loosely linked to international money markets. However,
the economic fallout will ultimately be felt by all,
negatively affecting foreign direct investment flowing into
Arab countries and real estate markets. This will cause a
slowdown in economic growth and a rise in
unemployment in the region. Arab countries reliant on
exporting goods and services to the USA and European
Union (EU) and those that normally receive aid from these
quarters may suffer. Even before the economic recession
emerged in the last quarter of 2008, unemployment in the
Arab world was higher than in any other part of the world,
at around 12%. Young job-seekers constitute over 40% of
the region’s unemployed (UNESCWA, 2007).
Despite the international economic uncertainty, Arab
states will have no choice but to stimulate science,
technology and innovation (STI), together with the
education sector, if only to overcome some lingering
problems like food, water and energy insecurity. Arab
countries can also learn from the remarkable socioeconomic
progress of countries such as Brazil, China,
India, Malaysia and Mexico, due in part to S&T.

Latin America is a very heterogeneous region in terms of the levels of development of countries and the maturity of their NSI. But the region has a common feature that crosses from Patagonia to Rio Grande and from the Pacific to the Atlantic: it is very uneven socially speaking. Major disparities persist within countries in welfare levels measured by per capita income and equality in income distribution. Even in countries that have achieved the group of high-income economies and built more articulated NSI, inequality prevails and large groups of the population remain excluded from the benefits of the development process. This book is about inclusiveness, innovation systems and development. It deals with some of the key questions in the region: How to accelerate the development process and be able to include the less benefited sectors? How to build NSIs that lead to inclusive development processes? What can we learn from the recent experiences of policy making in these issues?
This book focuses on the issue of the building of innovation systems that lead to inclusive development in Latin America. It focuses on the role of public policy, particularly in STI, in prioritizing and coordinating towards inclusive development, the challenges this implies for policy design, the required structural change to build NSI where knowledge is used for the society, and the participation of stakeholders in this process. The policy dimension crosses all the country chapters, in some of them directly related to concrete policy experiences of linking innovation and social inclusion, while in others as a more general reflection on routes of development that could lead to diminishing social exclusion.

Mapping Research and Innovation in the Republic of Zimbabwe is the second of a series of country profiles prepared by UNESCO’s Global Observatory of Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy Instruments (GO-SPIN). The series is designed to expose – through the rigorous application of an assessment lens—usable insights about science, technology, engineering, and innovation (SETI) policies and their context. The GO-SPIN programme is helping Member States to reform and upgrade national science systems and governance. It promotes building capacity to monitor and evaluate the policy performance, through a structural analysis (covering the explicit policy, the SETI national ecosystem, the legal framework and operational policy instruments), because such analysis points to implicit policies and gaps, and situates the performance of Israel’s policy. In this way, the scope of standard SETI assessment can be widened, to take into account country-specific contexts, as well as emerging knowledge of technological advances that contribute to sustainable development. While complementing efforts to promote evidence-based SETI policy-making as well as efforts to evaluate policy performance, GO-SPIN offers a good baseline for the promotion of scientific and technological foresight studies.

Science, technology and innovation (STI) is crucially important to eradicating poverty, and making advances in various areas such as agriculture, health, environment, transport, industry, and telecommunications. Therefore, it is vital to the overall socioeconomic development of nations. The indispensable role of STI in the competitive globalized economy led to several attempts to measure national STI capacities. The present study outlines STI capacity around three sets of capabilities: technological capabilities, social capabilities, and common capabilities. The Global Science, Technology and Innovation Capacity (GSTIC) index was developed to provide current evidence on the national STI capacities of the countries, and to improve the composite indicators used for such purposes. The GSTIC ranks a large number of countries (167) on the basis of their STI capacities and categories them into four groups: i.e. leaders, dynamic adopters, slow adopters, and laggards. For more meaningful assessment of the STI capacities of nations, it captures the achievement gaps of individual countries with the highest achiever. The study also provides ranking and achievement gaps of nations in the nine GSTIC pillars: technology creation, R&D capacity, R&D performance, technology absorption , diffusion of old technologies, diffusion of recent innovations, exposure to foreign technology, human capital, and enabling factors. A more detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses in different pillars of STI capacity of ten selected countries is also provided. The results show that there are significant disparities among nations in STI capacity and its various aspects, and developing countries have much to catch-up with the developed nations. However, different countries may adopt different strategies according to their strengths and weaknesses. Useful insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the national STI capacities of different countries are provided in the study.

Mapping Research and Innovation in Lao’s People Democratic Republic is the seventh of a series of country profiles prepared by UNESCO’s Global Observatory of Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy Instruments (GO-SPIN). The series is designed to expose – through the rigorous application of an assessment lens—usable insights about science, technology, engineering, and innovation (SETI) policies and their context. The GO-SPIN programme is helping Member States to reform and upgrade national science systems and governance. It promotes building capacity to monitor and evaluate the policy performance, through a structural analysis (covering the explicit policy, the SETI national ecosystem, the legal framework and operational policy instruments), because such analysis points to implicit policies and gaps, and situates the performance of Israel’s policy. In this way, the scope of standard SETI assessment can be widened, to take into account country-specific contexts, as well as emerging knowledge of technological advances that contribute to sustainable development. While complementing efforts to promote evidence-based SETI policy-making as well as efforts to evaluate policy performance, GO-SPIN offers a good baseline for the promotion of scientific and technological foresight studies.

This paper reviews the emerging literature on innovation policy from a practitioner's perspective, reviews the policy implications of an evolutionary perspective in economics, and identifies newly emerging areas of innovation policy analysis. We show that an innovation system is a dominant policy discourse, that there are limits of policy implications from an evolutionary perspective, and that there is a need for explicitly policy motivated analysis grounded in a broad evolutionary perspective. Innovation policy studies are an ...

Esta es la traducción al catellano del capítulo sobre America Latina publicado en el Informe Mundial de la Ciencia de la UNESCO de 2015. Se presenta la evolución reciente de los sistemas nacionales de ciencia, tecnología e innovación en la región analizando las características económicas, sociales, educativas y culturales, y de la evolución de sus respectivos indicadores.

¿Cómo se transforma el conocimiento científico y tecnológico generado en instituciones públicas en soluciones a algunos de los problemas sociales y ambientales más acuciantes del país? ¿Qué rol juegan las políticas de Ciencia y Tecnología para que eso pase (o no)? Esta nota busca mostrar las posibilidades y restricciones para convertir la inclusión social, el desarrollo local y la sustentabilidad ambiental en un desafío científico técnico.
Desde probióticos para resolver problemas de desnutrición, reactivos para diagnosticar enfermedades asociadas a situaciones de vulnerabilidad social, promoción de la salud en comunidades sin acceso a agua segura, biorremediación de aguas y suelos, hasta generar productos para dinamizar pequeñas economías regionales. Estas experiencias de desarrollo tecnológico son minoritarias en el sistema CyT argentino. Transitan en tensión permanente entre los laboratorios y el territorio, entre el dominio de “lo biológico” y “lo social”, entre conocimientos aplicables y problemas para aplicarlos, entre el compromiso social de la investigación pública y las exigencias del sistema de evaluación científica. Una ciencia para el desarrollo y la inclusión social requiere tanto de nuevas herramientas de política como de revisar cómo y para qué hacemos ciencia, pensando “lo biológico”, “lo tecnológico” y “lo social” como un tejido sin costuras.

This is an edited book about the heterogeneity and diversity seen in the design and implementation of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policies in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. Throughout the book we show that STI policy-making is governed by the convergence of the different trends by which countries apply new conceptual frameworks. These trends emerge from both outside the region, like the National Innovation System (NIS) approach (Freeman 1987; Lundvall 1992; Nelson 1993; Kim 1997); and from the inside too, such as the Latin American school of thought on science and technology and the structuralist views, among others (Sábato and Botana 1968; Presbich 1949a, b; Furtado 1958, 1961; Herrera 1971; Sagasti 1978). At the same time, countries try to learn from each other to improve their actions, yet we can see diverging trends that result from institutional constraints and differences in political economics, factors that determine the application of these approaches to each particular country. Having said this, the first topic of this introduction is the convergence of said trends and views.

En este trabajo se analiza el vínculo entre la estabilidad política de largo plazo y la eficiencia gubernamental a la hora de evaluar el desempeño de las políticas en ciencia, tecnología e innovación (CTI). Se mostrará que el impacto de dichas políticas CTI y sus instrumentos, dependerá altamente de las condiciones mencionadas. Dentro de un marco teórico de ciclos largos, se describirá la evolución de los paradigmas tecno-económicos y organizacionales (TEO) de las políticas CTI entre 1945 y 2016. Se enumerarán las actitudes societales predominantes en cada una de las cuatro fases de los dos paradigmas TEO que se desarrollaron durante el período analizado. Se mostrará que ALC está comenzando a atravesar por una fase sinérgica de acción del nuevo paradigma de ciencia de la sostenibilidad, similar a la del período 1960–1973 (donde surgió la Escuela Latinoamericana de Pensamiento en CyT marcada por el auge del modelo lineal de la ciencia). Determinadas las características de la fase política, económica y societal del futuro cercano (2016–2030), se formularán las restricciones y potencialidades que los sistemas nacionales investigación e innovación requieren para alcanzar las metas nacionales y regionales en CTI, vinculadas a los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (Objetivo 9).

This paper analyzes the development of innovative activity in Uzbekistan, complex development of the regions through the introduction of innovative technologies, improvement of infrastructure for an information system directed at the main goal of the mechanism of implementation of activities. Аннотация В данной статье анализируется вопросы развития инновационной деятельности в Узбекистане, комплексное развития регионов за счёт внедрение инновационной технологии, совершенствование инфраструктуры обеспечения информационной системы, направленное на основную цель механизма реализации мероприятий. Nowadays implementing active innovative investment policy in Uzbekistan is the one of the priority directions of developing the economic sectors of Uzbekistan. Nowadays innovative activity is the important prerequisite for developing the national economy and is the real mechanism of modernization of sectors of it in the near future. Innovation policy is directed to the long term future and is the important factor for growing the power and ability of the state, plays main role in the competitiveness and the sustainable development of the economy. This means that the modernization of strategic important scientific-technical and perspective projects, leading manufacturers of sectors of production, technical and technological renewal, activating the local innovative technologies are intended. President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov said that amendments to the accepted programs should be done through paying attention to complex development of regions, identifying the prioritized directions taking into account the specific characteristics of the region, the rapid growth of processing industry, construction and building industry, information-communication technologies and service sector, and providing employment for Youth on these basis, achieving financial self-sufficiency and reducing subventions in case of comprehensive assessment of unused reserves and production capacities. Generally known, that the process of innovative-investment will be developed on the basis of the transfer of technologies. The transfer of technologies in accordance with the development of its linear includes the following main steps: Implementation of fundamental scientific researches, applied research, innovation and new technologies into production; Commercialization of marketing and technologies (introduction of finished goods into market). The successful implementation of all stages of technology transfer should be realized the following necessary conditions. In particular:

This paper aims to contribute to the thematic stream upon organizing work in the knowledge economy, and it is related to the question concerning both governmental strategies to foster creativity among workers and organizations, and the institutional design of the public agencies in charge of the development of science and technology. Our contribution explores the level of coherence among policy's aims, programmers' objectives, the methodologies to evaluate them and the indicators available focused in the institutional design of the regulatory agencies. It draws from the Mexican experience in the role of the regulatory agencies, the implementation of policies addressed to university research, as well as the designing of evaluations and the state of the art in the use of methodologies related to R&D and innovation activity. The exploration benefits from the discussion upon evidence-based public policy and STI indicator development (OECD, 2007a; Painter, 2007; Gough, 2007).

Introduction/Abstract. [1]This chapter's goal is to provide an overview of some key issues in the relationship between business, science, and technology, with a focus on science, technology and innovation (STI) governance or policymaking. First, the topic of technology change as an organizational field will be explored. It will be shown how issues of causality in the historically changing relations between technological revolutions, and modes of conducting business (capitalism) and science have been replaced by questions about co-evolution, boundary-crossing and assemblage. Then the discussion will move to types of scientific theories dealing with socio-technological change. This issues in a brief sketch of the Multi-Level Perspective theory of innovation systems, as the most recent synthesis of thinking about technology in evolutionary economics and network sociology. [2]Second, technology change is recast as a strategic action field, in which several types of agents engage in competitive promising games. It will be shown how de facto governance, and policy thinking about STI-issues has moved from market and government failures to guarantee fair competition between firms, to innovation system failures in assuring national competitiveness in a global market, and, more recently, to transformation failures in enabling techno-social change for an ecologically sustainable future. Discussing policy instruments for these different goals and contexts, STI-policy has become a bewildering palimpsest of older and new policy instruments. Through policy instrument layering, conversion and drifting STI-governance is highly tentative - more an aspiration than an achievement. [3]The third and concluding section reflects on unintended consequences of de facto governance of technology, by firms as limited liability companies, and science as ‘the endless frontier’. Apart from ecological disasters, the loss of the public’s trust in science due to its pervasive commercialization is discussed. Against this background the future of STI-governance is conjectured as a rethinking and political struggle about the moral labour implicit in the de facto governance of technology.

Both business and social innovations have been studied for several decades by now. Yet, these two communities still seem to live in their own fiefdoms. This review aims at stressing the need and possibilities for more
interactions and exchanges between these two ‘tribes’. As a first step, lessons from business innovation studies are highlighted below, indicating opportunities to refine the analytical tools and methods we use, and thus improve our understanding of social innovation processes. These insights
– on the degree of novelty, level of change, the ‘dark side’ of innovation, policy rationales to justify interventions, and policy implications – can be useful for practitioners, social innovation scholars, policy analysts and policy-makers.

This compilation contains the nine background papers drafted by members of the European Commission's Expert Group 'Strategic Foresight for R&I Policy in Horizon 2020' (SFRI). All papers have been finally endorsed by the entire group. They are the basis for the group's final report, entitled 'Strategic Foresight in EU R&I Policy: Wider Use – More Impact'.

In the past few decades, the importance of dynamics of University-Industry Linkage(UIL) in strengthening national and regional innovation competency and global competitiveness has been progressively more acknowledged. However, establishing an effective UIL for a better economic development is still a challenging endeavor in Ethiopia, particularly in Tigray region. This study is aimed at assessing the status of UIL and in order to achieve such aim it analyzed the determinants of firms’ intensity of interaction with the Mekelle University (MU) and the effect of the intensity of interaction on the relevant firms’ innovation performance. The findings of the study showed that the status of UIL between the firms and the university in Tigray region was at an infant stage. The study also found that firm size, firm age (startups) and government supports have had a significant effect on firms’ intensity of interaction with the MU. However, the firms’ intensity of interaction with the MU did n...

This chapter's goal is to provide an overview of some key issues in the relationship between business, science, and technology, with a focus on science, technology and innovation (STI) governance or policymaking. First, the topic of technology change as an organizational field will be explored. It will be shown how issues of causality in the historically changing relations between technological revolutions, and modes of conducting business (capitalism) and science have been replaced by questions about co-evolution, boundary-crossing and assemblage. Then the discussion will move to types of scientific theories dealing with socio-technological change. This issues in a brief sketch of the Multi-Level Perspective theory of innovation systems, as the most recent synthesis of thinking about technology in evolutionary economics and network sociology.

Second, technology change is recast as a strategic action field, in which several types of agents engage in competitive promising games. It will be shown how de facto governance, and policy thinking about STI-issues has moved from market and government failures to guarantee fair competition between firms, to innovation system failures in assuring national competitiveness in a global market, and, more recently, to transformation failures in enabling techno-social change for an ecologically sustainable future.  Discussing policy instruments for these different goals and contexts, STI-policy has become a bewildering palimpsest of older and new policy instruments. Through policy instrument layering, conversion and drifting STI-governance is highly tentative - more an aspiration than an achievement.

The third and concluding section reflects on unintended consequences of de facto governance of technology, by firms as limited liability companies, and science as ‘the endless frontier’. Apart from ecological disasters, the loss of the public’s trust in science due to its pervasive commercialization is discussed. Against this background the future of STI-governance is conjectured as a rethinking and political struggle about the moral labour implicit in the de facto governance of technology.

Este trabajo exploró el tema de la especialización inteligente (EI). Obtuvo hechos estilizados a partir de su aplicación en otras regiones del mundo, lo cual permitió construir un modelo genérico con el objetivo de identificar las condiciones necesarias para su diseño e implementación en Guanajuato. Se presenta como una investigación de tipo empírica que utilizó herramientas cualitativas y estuvo guiada por una metodología de estudio de caso. Las políticas de ciencia, tecnología e innovación (CTI) e industriales, así como el sistema regional de innovación (SRI) constituyeron las unidades de análisis de este trabajo. Aunada a las condiciones necesarias, el modelo genérico de su aplicación proporcionó algunas guías para la conformación de un SRI, y para el diseño e implementación de políticas de CTI e industriales.

This work explored the theme of the Smart Specialization theme and obtained some stylized facts of its application in some regions in the world. Those facts allowed the construction of a generic model, which has the objective of identifying the necessary conditions for its design and implementation in Guanajuato. It is presented as an empirical research that used qualitative tools and was guided by a study case methodology. The STI and industrial policies as well as the regional innovation system constituted the analysis units of this work. Added with the necessary conditions, the generic model of its application provided some guidelines for the conformation of a regional innovation system, and the design and implementation of STI and industrial policies.

Este trabalho explorou o tema da especialização inteligente. Foram
obtidos fatos estilizados da aplicação em outras regiones do mundo que permitiram a construção do modelo genérico, com o objectivo de identificar as condições necesarias para desenhar e implentar em Guanajuato. Se mostra como uma pesquisa de tipo empírica que utilizou ferramentas qualitativas e foi guiada por uma metodogia de estudo de caso. As políticas de CTI, as industriais junto com o sistema regional de inovação construíram as unidades de análisé deste trabalho. Somado às condições necesarias, o modelo genérico da aplica ção propus alumas guías para a formação de um sistema regional de inovação, e para
o desenho e implementação das políticas de CTI e industriais.