Science and technology policy and the National Innovation System in Argentina

Includes bibliography

Innovation and Globalization Policy in Small Transition Countries ; Case study: Macedonia and Slovenia

Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit der Innovations- und Globalisierungspolitik in kleinen Transformationsl��ndern am Beispiel Mazedoniens; diese wurde mit der Lage in Slowenien verglichen, einem Land von ungef��hr gleicher Gr����e und mit gemeinsamer Vergangenheit als Teilrepublik der Jugoslawischen F��deration, aber mit einem wesentlich h��heren ��konomischen Entwicklungsstand. Innovation wird dabei verstanden als ���Herstellung, Anpassung und Ausnutzung von Neuerungen���, und sie wird durch das Umfeld, in dem sie stattfindet, beeinflusst. Anpassung und Ausnutzung sind gerade f��r kleine Transformationsl��nder von erheblicher Bedeutung, da ihre F��higkeit zu Herstellung von Neuerungen sehr begrenzt sind. Die Rolle der Innovationspolitik besteht hierbei darin, institutionelle und organisationelle Regulierungen einzuf��hren, die ein g��nstiges Umfeld sowohl f��r Innovationen als auch f��r die Entwicklung eines nationalen Innovationssystems schaffen. Die Rolle der Politik besteht also nicht in der Innovation als solcher, sondern in der Herstellung der notwendigen Bedingungen f��r die Industrie und die Forschungseinrichtungen dahingehend zu schaffen, dass sie ihr Wissen, ihre Fertigkeiten und ihre praktischen Erfahrungen f��r innovative T��tigkeiten einsetzen k��nnen. Auf der einen Seite gibt es Institutionen und Organisationen, ohne die die Unternehmen r��ckst��ndig und wenig leistungsstark w��ren (etwa das Patentamt oder Institutionen h��herer Bildung), und auf der anderen Seite gibt es Institutionen und Organisationen, welche die Unternehmen dabei unterst��tzen, dass sie ihre T��tigkeit weiter unterst��tzen (z.B. durch Technologietransfer-Zentren und Netzwerke). Die Leistungen dieser Institutionen und Organisationen sind von gro��er Bedeutung f��r die nationalen Innovationssysteme und sollten ihrerseits durch Innovationspolitik unterst��tzt werden; dies bedeutet jedoch nicht, dass diese Leistungen vom Staat bereitgestellt werden, vielmehr sollte die Wirtschaftspolitik M��glichkeiten f��r die ��ffentlich/private oder sogar rein private Bereitstellung solcher Leistungen in Erw��gung ziehen; dies w��rde nicht nur die Kosten f��r den Staat senken, sondern auch die Effizienz bei der Erstellung dieser Leistungen steigern. Die Arbeit kommt zu dem Schluss, dass das gr����te Problem der Innovationspolitik in Mazedonien darin besteht, dass es sie gar nicht gibt, und zwar nicht als Folge einer bewussten Entscheidung dar��ber. Tats��chlich m��ssen Ressourcen und Zeit f��r die Schaffung eines nationalen Innovationssystems eingesetzt werden mit Hilfe einer Politik, die sich auf die wesentlichen Umrisse konzentriert, wobei die Nachfrage nach Technologie im Unternehmensbereich gesteigert wird und das Wissen und das Informationsangebot restrukturiert wird. Dieses System muss offen sein, unter best��ndigem Verbesserungsdruck stehen und f��hig sein, sich an Ver��nderungen anzupassen. Damit eine solche Politik erfolgreich ist, muss es einen Konsens dar��ber zwischen allen beteiligten Akteuren geben und dar��ber hinaus auch eine Koh��renz zwischen den verschiedenen politischen Institutionen. Das ist deswegen wichtig, weil der Innovationsprozess komplex ist und verschiedene Politikbereiche ber��hrt. Ziel sollte die Schaffung eines Systems sein, das einerseits auf Autonomie und Kooperation aufbaut, andererseits aber auch Wettbewerb zwischen den beteiligten Institutionen und Organisationen f��rdert. Eine wichtige Bedingung f��r ein positives Investitionsklima im Bereich der Innovation ist die Erreichung von makro��konomischer Stabilit��t. Die gegenw��rtige Situation ist gekennzeichnet durch Instabilit��t des Rechtswesens, durch Korruption und Probleme des Vertragsschutzes, die sowohl ausl��ndische als auch inl��ndische Akteure davon abh��lt, sich in wirtschaftlichen Aktivit��ten in Mazedonien zu engagieren. Bei der Suche nach einem Ausweg aus diesen Problemen ist es wichtig f��r Mazedonien, von anderen L��ndern wie Slowenien zu lernen, die ��hnliche Probleme haben, aber auch schon Erfahrungen in der Probleml��sung. Man muss dabei beachten, dass der Entwicklungsstand, das wirtschaftliche und das politische Umfeld in beiden Vergleichsl��ndern sich erheblich unterscheiden, so dass die Lektionen, die Mazedonien von Slowenien lernen k��nnte, nicht direkt ��bertragen und kopiert werden k��nnen, sondern entsprechend angepasst werden m��ssen. Die vorliegende Arbeit liefert Einsichten in die Probleme der Innovationspolitik in Transformationsl��ndern und liefert daher sowohl einen Anreiz als auch eine Quelle von Informationen f��r k��nftige Analysen der wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen und vor allem Innovationspolitik in Transformationsl��ndern.

Industrial Development and the Innovation System of the Ethanol Sector in Brazil

The purpose of this paper is to analyze innovations and the innovation system and its dynamics in the ethanol sector in the State of Sao Paulo. More specifically, this paper focuses on the development process in the sector, the public policies taken to promote the sector, and the organizations and key players involved in these policies and their responses to unforeseeable changes in economic, social and technological environments. To this end, this paper takes an historical perspective and reviews data on the cultivation of sugar cane, the production of ethanol, and on sugar cane yields as indicators of the innovations achieved in the sector. The geographical distribution of these indicators is also examined. Next, several cases in Piracicaba and Campinas in the State of Sao Paulo are presented; these give us a more concrete idea of the processes involved in innovation and technology transfer. Based on these observations, the ethanol cluster and the innovation system of the State of Sao Paulo are discussed from the viewpoint of the flowchart approach to industrial cluster policy.

Adaptability, Transformation and Complex Changes in Namibia and Tanzania: Resilience and Innovation System Development in Local Communities

This thesis is a research about the recent complex spatial changes in Namibia and Tanzania and local communities��� capacity to cope with, adapt to and transform the unpredictability engaged to these processes. I scrutinise the concept of resilience and its potential application to explaining the development of local communities in Southern Africa when facing various social, economic and environmental changes. My research is based on three distinct but overlapping research questions: what are the main spatial changes and their impact on the study areas in Namibia and Tanzania? What are the adaptation, transformation and resilience processes of the studied local communities in Namibia and Tanzania? How are innovation systems developed, and what is their impact on the resilience of the studied local communities in Namibia and Tanzania? I use four ethnographic case studies concerning environmental change, global tourism and innovation system development in Namibia and Tanzania, as well as mixed-methodological approaches, to study these issues. The results of my empirical investigation demonstrate that the spatial changes in the localities within Namibia and Tanzania are unique, loose assemblages, a result of the complex, multisided, relational and evolutional development of human and non-human elements that do not necessarily have linear causalities. Several changes co-exist and are interconnected though uncertain and unstructured and, together with the multiple stressors related to poverty, have made communities more vulnerable to different changes. The communities��� adaptation and transformation measures have been mostly reactive, based on contingency and post hoc learning. Despite various anticipation techniques, coping measures, adaptive learning and self-organisation processes occurring in the localities, the local communities are constrained by their uneven power relationships within the larger assemblages. Thus, communities��� own opportunities to increase their resilience are limited without changing the relations in these multiform entities. Therefore, larger cooperation models are needed, like an innovation system, based on the interactions of different actors to foster cooperation, which require collaboration among and input from a diverse set of stakeholders to combine different sources of knowledge, innovation and learning. Accordingly, both Namibia and Tanzania are developing an innovation system as their key policy to foster transformation towards knowledge-based societies. Finally, the development of an innovation system needs novel bottom-up approaches to increase the resilience of local communities and embed it into local communities. Therefore, innovation policies in Namibia have emphasised the role of indigenous knowledge, and Tanzania has established the Living Lab network.

Understanding and enhancing research-policy linkages in Australian housing: A discussion paper

This project aimed to develop a systematic framework for understanding the relationship between social science research and public policy, and to build more effective linkages between social researchers and policy practitioners in the Australian housing system, particularly through AHURI. The project is explicitly applied and solution-focused. It was undertaken in close collaboration with AHURI and has contributed to AHURI's overall mission and strategy to enhancing research-based housing policy. It provided an opportunity for the AHURI policy community to engage in a process of action-oriented, self-reflection around its core business of applied housing policy research.

Innovation and environmental policy: Clean vs. dirty technical change

We study a two sector endogenous growth model with environmental quality with two goods and two factors of production, one clean and one dirty. Technological change creates clean or dirty innovations. We compare the laissez-faire equilibrium and the social optimum and study first- and second-best policies. Optimal policy encourages research toward clean technologies. In a second-best world, we claim that a portfolio that includes a tax on the polluting good combined with optimal innovation subsidy policies is less costly than increasing the price of the polluting good alone. Moreover, a discriminating innovation subsidy policy is preferable to a non-discriminating one.

The use of future-oriented knowledge in regional innovation processes: Research on knowledge generation, transfer and conversion

The importance of the regional level in research has risen in the last few decades and a vast literature in the fields of, for instance, evolutionary and institutional economics, network theories, innovations and learning systems, as well as sociology, has focused on regional level questions. Recently the policy makers and regional actors have also began to pay increasing attention to the knowledge economy and its needs, in general, and the connectivity and support structures of regional clusters in particular. Nowadays knowledge is generally considered as the most important source of competitive advantage, but even the most specialised forms of knowledge are becoming a short-lived resource for example due to the accelerating pace of technological change. This emphasizes the need of foresight activities in national, regional and organizational levels and the integration of foresight and innovation activities. In regional setting this development sets great challenges especially in those regions having no university and thus usually very limited resources for research activities. Also the research problem of this dissertation is related to the need to better incorporate the information produced by foresight process to facilitate and to be used in regional practice-based innovation processes. This dissertation is a constructive case study the case being Lahti region and a network facilitating innovation policy adopted in that region. Dissertation consists of a summary and five articles and during the research process a construct or a conceptual model for solving this real life problem has been developed. It is also being implemented as part of the network facilitating innovation policy in the Lahti region.

Governmental Measures to Enhance the Finnish Innovation System to Respond to the Challenge of Mitigating Climate Change

Climate innovations, that cover both technological applications and process and service innovations, play a key role in climate change mitigation. The purpose of this study was to examine how the Finnish innovation system could be enhanced with governmental measures so that the diffusion of climate innovations could be speeded up. During the study, it became evident that the governmental measures need to support the whole innovation chain, which comprises of research, development, demonstration and deployment. Only this can lead to the successful birth and diffusion of low carbon innovations. The study found that the strengths of the Finnish innovation system are research and development, and the current national innovation policies strongly support these activities. However, these have been emphasised at the expense of the demonstration and deployment. Consequently, the biggest bottlenecks in the Finnish innovation landscape are the lack of pilot and demonstration projects and slow commercialisation, thus the high price of the innovation. To meet with the challenge, the government should firstly promote strict greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. This would boost up the innovation activities, which would also lower the prices of the innovations. To speed up the commercialisation process, measures that stimulate the domestic market, such as feed-in-tariffs and public procurements, are needed. Special attention should also be paid to the measures that could shift the traditional closed innovation chain towards open innovation. This means that the product development should involve experts from several fields such as the user and marketing experts to speed up the commercialisation. In addition, efficient innovation co-operation between both private and public sector is essential. Finally, as the domestic resources are not adequate for producing all the innovations needed, the domestic innovation activities should be focused on a few sectors, and at the same time promote efficient import policies.

The Impact of National Innovation System on Entrepreneurial Venture Creation Process

The important role of entrepreneurship in countries��� economic development and overall society well-being is widely recognized by researchers, experts as well as policy makers. Every phase of the process of starting a new business is related to the interaction with at least one player of country innovation system and therefore the efficiency of this interaction may have an influence on the success of whole entrepreneurial process and consequently on the willingness of potential entrepreneurs to engage into this process. The study proposes a System Dynamics model for studying the impact of National Innovation System (NIS) on the entrepreneurial venture creation process. The developed model also takes country population aspect into account and provides results for estimation the effect various demographic tendencies on the process performance. The special impact is made on possible ways to facilitate the development of entrepreneurial framework conditions. Business incubators are seen as one of the effective tool for accomplishing such task. The study also provides the result for estimation of possible impact arising from properly functioned Business Incubators.

The Russian National Innovation System - an International Perspective

Russia inherited a large research and development (R&D) sector from the Soviet times, and has retained a substantial R&D sector today, compared with other emerging economies. However, Russia is falling behind in all indicators measuring innovative output in comparison with most developed countries. Russia���s innovation performance is disappointing, despite the available stock of human capital and overall investment in R&D. The communist legacy still influences the main actors of the innovation system. The federal state is still the most important funding source for R&D. Private companies are not investing in innovative activities, preferring to ���import��� innovations embedded in foreign technologies. Universities are outsiders in the innovation system, only a few universities carry out research activities. Nowadays, Russia is a resource-depended country. The economy depends on energy and metals for growth. The Russian economy faces the challenge of diversification and should embrace innovation, and shift to a knowledge economy to remain competitive in the long run. Therefore, Russia has to tackle the challenge of developing an efficient innovation system with its huge potential in science expertise and engineering know-how.

Innovation and technology policy (ITP) for catching up: a three phase life cycle framework for industrializing economies

Includes bibliography

An Innovation System Perspective on Adaptation Strategies to Climate Variability and Water Management in India

Government policies play a critical role in influencing market conditions, institutions and overall agricultural productivity. The thesis therefore looks into the history of agriculture development in India. Taking a political economy perspective, the historical account looks at significant institutional and technological innovations carried out in pre- independent and post independent India. It further focuses on the Green Revolution in Asia, as forty years after; the agricultural community still faces the task of addressing recurrent issue of food security amidst emerging challenges, such as climate change. It examines the Green Revolution that took place in India during the late 1960s and 70s in a historical perspective, identifying two factors of institutional change and political leadership. Climate change in agriculture development has become a major concern to farmers, researchers and policy makers alike. However, there is little knowledge on the farmers��� perception to climate change and to the extent they coincide with actual climatic data. Using a qualitative approach,it looks into the perceptions of the farmers in four villages in the states of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. While exploring the adaptation strategies, the chapter looks into the dynamics of who can afford a particular technology and who cannot and what leads to a particular adaptation decision thus determining the adaptive capacity in water management. The final section looks into the devolution of authority for natural resource management to local user groups through the Water Users��� Associations as an important approach to overcome the long-standing challenges of centralized state bureaucracies in India. It addresses the knowledge gap of why some local user groups are able to overcome governance challenges such as elite capture, while others-that work under the design principles developed by Elinor Ostrom. It draws conclusions on how local leadership, can be promoted to facilitate participatory irrigation management.

The European Union���s growing innovation divide. Bruegel Policy Contribution Issue 2016/08 April 2016

There is a significant divide between the European Union countries with the greatest capacity to innovate, and those with the least capacity to innovate. The difficult convergence process has been proceeding only very slowly and unevenly, and more recently seems to have come to a halt. A particular weak spot for the EU is corporate investment in research; in this area, the intra-EU divide is growing. As the business sector is responsible for the persistent R&D intensity gap between the EU and the United States and Asia, the persistent failure of lagging EU countries to catch up in this area provides much of the explanation for the EU���s weak performance compared to other economies. The evidence shows that the deployment of public budgets and the mix of policies employed by EU member states have tended to aggravate the intra-EU divide. The EU needs to better understand its growing internal innovation divide if it is to achieve its ambition of becoming a world innovation leader.

A PHR system with policy-based fine-grained access control and revocation mechanism

Collaborative sharing of information is becoming much more needed technique to achieve complex goals in today's fast-paced tech-dominant world. Personal Health Record (PHR) system has become a popular research area for sharing patients informa- tion very quickly among health professionals. PHR systems store and process sensitive information, which should have proper security mechanisms to protect patients' private data. Thus, access control mechanisms of the PHR should be well-defined. Secondly, PHRs should be stored in encrypted form. Cryptographic schemes offering a more suitable solution for enforcing access policies based on user attributes are needed for this purpose. Attribute-based encryption can resolve these problems, we propose a patient-centric framework that protects PHRs against untrusted service providers and malicious users. In this framework, we have used Ciphertext Policy Attribute Based Encryption scheme as an efficient cryptographic technique, enhancing security and privacy of the system, as well as enabling access revocation. Patients can encrypt their PHRs and store them on untrusted storage servers. They also maintain full control over access to their PHR data by assigning attribute-based access control to selected data users, and revoking unauthorized users instantly. In order to evaluate our system, we implemented CP-ABE library and web services as part of our framework. We also developed an android application based on the framework that allows users to register into the system, encrypt their PHR data and upload to the server, and at the same time authorized users can download PHR data and decrypt it. Finally, we present experimental results and performance analysis. It shows that the deployment of the proposed system would be practical and can be applied into practice.

Enhancing research-policy linkages in Australian housing: an options paper

A key ingredient in the successful delivery of a policy relevant research program is a process of engagement between the research and policy communities, centred on the conduct, dissemination and use of research. The research recommends that AHURI continue to build and extend its 'engagement strategy' to further realise the benefits of a research program relevant to policy.