The Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) is a multi-country initiative dedicated to how policymakers, academics and funding agencies can orientate science, technology and innovation towards transition and a more sustainable future.
Members aim to transform socio-technical systems for meeting societal needs, such as those for energy, healthcare or food, with the original aims of:
- redirecting the narrative for Science, Technology and Innovation policy away from a focus on purely economic growth towards a focus on the integration of the aims embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals for transformation;
- building demonstrators through experiments to explore how to approach, implement and evaluate Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) using a TIPC methodology; and
- generating a network of people and organisations working from transformative perspectives globally.
Agencies invest in a shared infrastructure and substantive programme of work that includes experimentation, research, training and strengthening of capacity – underpinned by the development of open-access learning and resources and a growing knowledge community.
TIPC is coordinated by the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex Business School (SPRU), in partnership with the Joint Research Centre of the Spanish National Research Council and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (INGENIO CSIC-UPV) and the Utrecht University Centre for Global Challenges (UGlobe).
In its first phase, members and bilateral policy partners have included:
- Business Finland
- Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development (CASTED)
- Council for Scientific and Industrial Research – Science and Technology Policy Research Institute, Ghana (CSIR-STEPRI)
- Department of Science and Innovation, South Africa
- Ministry for Higher Education and Research (MESR), Senegal
- Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Colombia (Minciencias)
- National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation, Kenya (NACOSTI)
- National Council of Science and Technology, Mexico (CONACyT)
- National Research Foundation, South Africa
- National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation, Panama (SENACYT)
- The Research Council of Norway
- Vinnova, Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems
TIPC has also developed links with hubs, networks of scholars and communities for research and capacity development, including:
- African Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation and Competence Building Systems (AfricaLics)
- Deep Transitions Futures
- DSI/NRF/Newton Fund Trilateral Research Chair in Transformative Innovation, the 4th Industrial Revolution and Sustainable Development
- European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation (Eu-SPRI Forum)
- European Institute of Innovation and Technology Climate Knowledge and Innovation Community (EIT Climate-KIC)
- Global Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence Building Systems (Globelics)
- Human Sciences Research Council Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (HSRC-CeSTII)
- Latin American and Caribbean HUB for Transformative Innovation Policy (HUBLAyCTIP)
- Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU)
- Southern African Development Community
- Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN)
- Transformative Innovation Policy Africa Hub
To learn more about the Consortium and its partners and activities, subscribe to the Digital Digest mailing list, visit the TIPC website, or follow activity on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Three Framings of Innovation Policy
Over the last decades two conceptual frameworks have dominated the development of innovation policy-making which has been based on the 20th century supply-driven innovation model, which takes competition between nations and support for R&D as the main entry point for policy making. Both frames assume economic growth is always positive, ignoring many of the unintended consequences of science & technology development that have adversely impacted society and the environment. A third frame, Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) is emerging – one that places social and environmental problems at the core.
The first framing portrays innovation policy as providing incentives for the market to produce socially and economically desired levels of science knowledge (R&D). This is mainly implemented by subsidies and measures to enhance the ‘appropriability’ of innovation (IPR). To identify which areas need support, foresight has been developed. With respect to negative externalities, various forms of technology assessment have been established and, to protect society if the impacts are becoming a problem, regulation is put in place. This framing identities the most important element of innovation as the discovery process (invention) and gives rise to the linear model in which technology is the application of scientific knowledge. The linear model privileges discovery over application. In part because the rewards of application are assumed to be carried out through an adequate functioning of the market system. Only in the case of market failure, is government action required.
The second framing aims to make better use of knowledge production, supports commercialisation and bridges the gap between discovery and application. This framing takes as central various forms of learning including: those acquired by using, producing and interacting; linkages between various actors; absorptive capacity and capability formation of firms; and finally, entrepreneurship. The rationale for policy intervention is system failure – the inability to make the most out of what is available due to missing or malfunctioning links in the innovation system. Innovation policy focuses, for example, on technology transfer, building technology platforms and technology clusters to stimulate interaction and human capital formation. Further, in this model, foresight, technology assessment and regulation are add-ons to the core activity of promoting innovation (on the assumption that any innovation is desirable and good since innovation is the motor for producing economic growth and competiveness).
A third frame for innovation policy is that of Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) which takes as a starting point that negative impacts or externalities of innovation can overtake positive contributions. TIP focuses on mobilising the power of innovation to address a wide range of societal challenges including inequality, unemployment and climate change. It emphasises policies for directing socio-technical systems into socially desirable directions and embeds processes of change in society. TIP explores issues around socio-technical system change to give a structural transformation in: governance arrangements between the state, the market, civil society and science; experimentation and societal learning; responsible research and innovation; and, finally, a more constructive role for foresight to shape innovation processes from the outset and on a continuing basis.
How does Frame Three differ?
This flowchart below demonstrates the principal difference between Frames 1 and 2, and then that of Frame 3. Frames 1 and 2 assume public welfare will be addressed through the stimulus of new knowledge and innovation which will be utilised by industry to achieve economic growth. Frame 3 explicitly and fundamentally addresses societal goals as a primary focus. By tackling societal challenges first and foremost, Frame 3 thinking supposes that, with attention on social and environmental welfare, there will be greater productivity and less inequality, therefore then, increased economic growth. It flows counter to that of Frame 1 and 2 assumptions.
