1. Disconnect innovation policy from science policy.
We still overwhelmingly link science, technology and innovation policy. Innovation policy has essentially become the new language for science policy. Pick up any national innovation policy release, and it will still be overwhelmingly about the production of science, the production of technologies and the production of innovation (whatever that means). It is time to disconnect innovation from production and think more about its wholistic implications as innovations get used. Otherwise we get this. A few years ago the OECD released a series of documents branded 'innovation strategy'. The key findings documents contains comments such as
- Ensure that framework conditions are sound and supportive of competition, conducive to innovation and are mutually reinforcing.
- These factors require rethinking innovation policy in order to move beyond supply-side policies focused on R&D and specific technologies to a more systemic approach that takes account of the many factors and actors that influence innovation performance, including demand-side policies. The policy objective should not be innovation as such, but its application to make life better for individuals and society at large. This is no easy task, especially as the scope for policies for innovation broadens. Effective policies will require priority setting and strategic decisions, safeguards against favouring a particular firm or region for political as opposed to economic or social reasons, and recognition that striving for “whole of government” co-ordination involves transaction costs. The objective of the OECD’s work to develop a strategy for developing policies for innovation is to support this process, avoid these pitfalls and provide guidance to achieve these goals.
- A more strategic focus on the role of policies for innovation in delivering stronger, cleaner and fairer growth.
- Broadening policies to foster innovation beyond science and technology in recognition of the fact that innovation involves a wide range of investments in intangible assets and actors.
- Education and training policies adapted to the needs of society today to empower people throughout society to be creative, engage in innovation and benefit from its outcomes.
- Greater policy attention to the creation and growth of new firms and their role in creating breakthrough innovations and new jobs.
- Improved mechanisms to foster the diffusion and application of knowledge through well-functioning networks and markets.
- New approaches and governance mechanisms for international cooperation in science and technology to help address global challenges and share costs and risks.
- Frameworks for measuring the broader, more networked concept of innovation and its impacts to guide policy making.
No word there on job losses, massive industry restructuring, industry location shifts etc.....Let's get serious, innovation has never been all upside, industries decline or transform. If we can break the close nexus of innovation policy from science policy we can better appreciate the 360 degree implications of innovations currently coming down the pipe.
2. Better knowledge investment statistics. We still use R&D data as the gold benchmark, but in many industries traditional R&D is not where they spend their knowledge investment dollars. We have known this for a long time but as manufacturing splitters around the globe and product architecture gets more centralised, the numbers become more meaningless. Further, a number of countries do not classify at great detail where the R&D is going anyway (in the university system for example), so the numbers do not tell us much. We cannot even cross classify research done in universities with research done in business as there are different classifications. Beyond R&D we have developed a classification of innovation (new product, new process etc), but what of developing an adoption based classification (innovation changeover costs, savings, job savings etc....)
3. The PhD system is broken. There is more and more evidence of this. In a zero growth university sector such as being experienced in many 'developed' economies then the continued assembly line production of PhDs trained for academia makes no logical sense at all. They are good labour for research grants but that seems a flawed relationship. PhDs could be more useful to society if the goals of their training were tweaked or overhauled to be more directed to being more valuable to non-profits, government agencies, business and starting their own businesses. For more reading on this see Nature 21 April 2011, vol 472 or a recent report on PhDs in Australia prepared by Toss Gascoigne and Associates (2012) 'Career Support for Researchers: Understanding Needs and Developing a best Practice Approach'.
4. Higher Education and Research. Disruptive change is headed for the university system. Lets accept that fact first. What those changes will look like it is very hard to say. That is the nature of disruptive innovation - technology change may have particular trajectories but their implementation is getting harder to predict. First, agree that change will happen and that what works today will probably not withstand the entrepreneurs of the next 15 years unchanged. That said, it is a massive system, with massive invested capital human and physical, with inherent location advantages so I am not saying it will all come crashing down. But we need to bring change conversations in from the fringe and begin to debate the future.
5. Reboot thinking on commercialisation. Commercialisation as currently typically defined is the transfer of knowledge (not people) from the universities to business. Our metrics are abysmal on proving or disproving this. So my point is simply takes a different approach. If commercialisation is such a problem is so many countries and has been for so many years then maybe its the concept that is bust. Put differently, if the treatment does not work there are two choices - the treatment is wrong or the diagnosis is wrong. I have been thinking for a number of years it is the latter and we are actually do the patient harm.
6. Embrace the role of failure. Failure is fundamental to learning and creativity. let us embrace it, so long as it leads to learning. Failure or knowing what does not work can be as big competitive advantage as knowing what does work. Can we work on incorporating failure into our schools and higher education more.
7. Macro-innonomics. The global financial crises has not abated yet, and this should give everyone in the innovation game pause to think. Old style economics of interest rates, savings, consumption and boring things like regulation still matter. How can we better integrate new thinking on innovation, with old economics alongside new imperatives such as sustainability. Such Macro-innonomics would be very useful for policy makers.
