Can, and should, behavioural neuroscience influence public policy?

Recent years have seen enormous demand amongst policy makers for new insights from the behavioural sciences, especially neuroscience. This demand is matched by an increasing willingness on behalf of behavioural scientists to translate the policy implications of their work. But can neuroscience really help shape the governance of a nation? Or does this represent growing misuse of neuroscience to attach scientific authority to policy, plus a clutch of neuroscientists trying to overstate their findings for a taste of power?. © 2012.

A framework for analysing business performance, firm innovation and related contextual factors: Perceptions of managers and policy makers in two European regions

The aim of this paper is to propose a novel reference framework that can be used to study how different kinds of innovation can result in better business performance and how external factors can influence both the firm's capacity to innovate and innovation itself. The value of the framework is demonstrated as it is applied in an exploratory study of the perceptions of public policy makers and managers from two European regions - the Veneto Region in Italy and the East of England in the UK. Amongst other things, the data gathered suggest that managers are generally less convinced than public policy makers, that the innovativeness of a firm is affected by factors over which policy makers have some control. This finding poses the question "what, if any, role can public policy makers play in enhancing a company's competitiveness by enabling it to become more innovative?".