Governance and learning in innovation policy - lessons from MONIT

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Governance and learning in innovation policy -
lessons from MONIT

• Svend Otto Remøe
• Prokontra AS
• OECD

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Contents

• MONIT Background and issues
• Governance and policy learning
• Obstacles and challenges in policy learning

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Background

• The innovation driven economy and NIS
• The OECD growth study illustrated the importance
  of innovation for growth
• Is there a new role of government?
• From general NIS systems perspectives to sectoral
  case studies and integration of policy as
  endogenous in NIS
• A greater need to develop a 3rd generation
  innovation policy

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Objectives of MONIT

• How national traditions and contexts generate and
  sustain policy orientations and mixes.
• How different policies interact to create a basis
  for developing horizontal policy.
• How to co-ordinate policies across institutional
  boundaries through inter-ministerial.
  collaboration and institutional mechanisms for
  policy learning within and between agencies and
  ministries.
• The key national capabilities for effective
  processes of policy formulation, co-ordination
  and implementation
• Exploratory study, ready-made generic solutions
  not to be expected

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Key concepts

• From government to governance A need to learn
  more about policy processes and institutions
• Co-ordination and coherence
• The policy cycle Agenda setting and formulation,
  implementation and learning
• Horizontalization Spanning ministerial
  boundaries
• Policy learning managing the production,
  diffusion and use of policy relevant knowledge

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Two views on policy making

• The exchange perspective Actors with interests
  and preferences negotiate and outcomes are
  easily achieved without frictions (a perfect
  market view)
• The evolutionary perspective Policy making take
  place within institutional arrangements, and
  cannot be understood without reference to
  historical, cultural and other factors (path
  dependency)

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The policy cycle
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The real thing
Lennart Elg, VINNOVA
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The policy co-ordination scale
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Integration

• Sectorial policy integration implies
• the incorporation of environmental concerns the
  protection and long-term sustainability of
  natural life-support systems into all stages of
  policymaking in non-environmental policy sectors,
  with a specific recognition of this goal as a
  guiding principle for the planning and execution
  of sectorial policy
• this should be accompanied by
• an attempt to aggregate presumed environmental
  consequences into an overall evaluation of
  governmental policy, and a commitment to minimize
  contradictions between environmental concerns and
  sectorial policies by assigning principled
  priority to the former over the latter.

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A taxonomy of innovation policy (Den Hertog,
Dialogic)
DOMAINS / GOALS Sectoral innovation policy Multi-sectoral innovation policy
Core innovation policy i.e. aimed primarily at innovating (ultimately) industry and economic growth Innovation policy in a limited sense (basically technology and industrial policies) Integrated STI policies
Broad innovation policy i.e. aimed at (ultimately) economic growth and Quality of life Innovation policies in other sectoral domains e.g. innovation policies in health, innovation policies in the environment Horizontal / comprehensive / integrated or coherent / systemic innovation policies
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Barriers to horizontal policy integration

• Lack of understanding of IP in other domains
• Strong, segmented belief systems
• Schools of thought being reproduced through
  recruitment and socializing
• Lack of capability to exploit windows of
  opportunity to recouple problems, proposals and
  politics
• Definition/understanding of other policy areas as
  rivals
• Dominance of efficiency imperative in policy
  making
• Ineffective involvement of stakeholders
• Drivers and instruments of policy differ across
  domains

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History

• Economic specialization defines long term path
  dependency
• Institutions and priorities have their defining
  moments
• Priorities and agendas are implicitly strongly
  influenced by traditions and corporatist systems
  for stakeholder involvement
• Reflective governance needed

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6. Knowledge about biases

• Are biases reflected in processes of policy
  making?
• Do governments know what they represent and
  exclude?
• Are there misconceived holy cows in the system?
• Are the biases resulting from economic
  specialisation?

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Sweden
16
Norway
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Sources of incoherence

• Often persistent gaps between what is perceived
  as challenges and institutional responses to meet
  them
• Competing rationalities in governments
• Persistent short-termism tend to undercut
  strategic needs
• NPM Needs strategic support to enhance
  long-termism
• Different views and understanding of IP
• Different imperatives for different policy areas
• Fragmentation reduces strategic capabilities
• Competition and personal ambitions

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Fish farming as nexus of policies
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Long termism

• Most countries need long term approaches for
  strategic priority setting
• But existing institutions and practices
  (fragmentation, budget mechamisms) prevail
• Many countries compensate for this through
  by-pass operations and new funding mechanisms

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The use of evaluations in Austria
Impacts of conducted evaluation N
Ex-post legitimating of the programme 27 90
Re-allocation of funds 10 33
Input for stop-or-go decisions 6 20
Substantial change of funding policy 9 30
Change of processes 2 7
Other 9 30
Total 30
Source tip survey, Jörg 2004).
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Building intelligence into policy learning

• Policy learning mostly takes place through ex
  ante mechanisms like foresight and white papers
• Evaluation too often used for legitimization
• Organisational mechanisms like tasks forces, team
  work etc support learning
• Increasing need for socio-institutional
  adjustments stimulate knowledge flows
• More systemic and integrated evaluations in
  innovation policy are needed
• Implementation and monitoring systems may boost
  learning

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Some conclusions

• Integrate learning across the policy cycle
• Governance practices are tightly linked with
  capacities for policy learning
• Leadership and communication will support a
  learning oriented organisation
• Develop appropriate knowledge bases to support
  agenda setting, prioritization and implementation
• Develop pragmatic public-private interfaces to
  enhance information exchange
• Balancing imperatives in horizontal approaches