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Center for Innovation Systems & Policy
How do innovations come about? How do new technologies get established? How does this change societies? The Center for Innovation Systems & Policy provides answers to these questions and develops future scenarios – and it is an important think tank and advisor for Austrian and European policy-making in this regard.
Transformative Innovation Policy Research, development and innovation are of central importance for securing our economic well-being and for dealing with societal challenges. Against this background, AIT deals with current and future requirements for research and innovation systems as well as with the resulting options for research, technology and innovation policy (RTI policy) and its stakeholders. We use state-of-the-art methods to analyse RTI processes and systems, as well as forward-looking approaches to help public administration and companies in defining their RTI policy strategies. One focus is transformative innovation policy, which transcends established RTI agendas and also addresses institutional conditions that are crucial for the scaling and diffusion of innovations. In our research work, we focus both on questions of system change in areas such as energy, mobility, nutrition and urban development and on the effects of potentially disruptive technologies, in particular in the context of the digitisation of economy and society. With its work in the research field of Innovation Systems & Digitalisation AIT contributes to understanding and developing a systemic RTI policy and sustainable corporate strategies. It does so on the basis of a solid knowledge of research and innovation practices of companies and research organizations. The empirical analysis of innovation systems is rapidly gaining importance due to increasing complexity and dynamism. In the research field Innovation Dynamics & Modelling, corresponding quantitative methods – data, indicators and models – are developed and applied to current issues in innovation research. Using forward-looking methods, our research field Societal Futures explores new signals and patterns in technological and socio-economic development and uses them to develop sustainable policy strategies. The development, assessment, and evaluation of RTI policy instruments is at the heart of the research field Institutional Change & Policy Instruments.
European Manufacturing Survey: Trends in production The European Manufacturing Survey (EMS) monitors the use of technological and organisational innovations in production and the resulting production improvements in the manufacturing sector. AIT is conducting the survey in Austria as part of an international consortium. It can be seen, for example, that one third of all large companies already use collaborating robots and that this trend will continue. The results provide a solid decision-making basis for government, industry, and research.
RISIS: Infrastructures for RTI policy RISIS ("Research Infrastructure for Research and Innovation Policy Studies") is a pan-European research infrastructure for the support of empirical innovation research. It improves the quality of the design and evaluation of RTI policy measures in Europe through a radically improved information base. It is highly relevant for research, design, and evaluation of RTI policy in Europe. The Center is a core partner of RISIS, which entered a second development phase in January 2019 and is once again supported by the EU Research Framework Programme. RISIS II focuses on new functionalities and services in harmonized databases on RTI activities, such as address-based geocoding, or the ability to apply own thematic classifications to the data sets through semantic techniques.
Evaluation of FWF programmes The evaluation of the "Special Research Programmes" of the FWF (Austrian Science Fund) was the focus of this project. They constitute the largest funding activities of the FWF and are intended to support the development of research priorities at Austrian universities. The aim was to review the FWF's current SFB funding proAIT AUSTRIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Matthias Weber, Head of Center for Innovation Systems and Policy
gramme in order to identify strengths and weaknesses and to quantify the results, output, and impact. The results were used to derive recommendations for the further development of the FWF's general funding strategy for large centres of excellence.
Foresight on Demand AIT plays a central role in designing the thematic fields of the future EU research framework programme "Horizon Europe" (2021–2027). Based on five "mission areas", clearly visible RTI missions are defined together with citizens, stakeholders, the European Parliament, and member states. Matthias Weber's team conducts corresponding foresights for the five missions in the areas of cancer, adaptation to climate change, healthy oceans, climate-neutral cities as well as soil health and food. “We are developing various scenarios for the future and want to use them to derive possible options for policy action. In doing this, our Center works directly for the European Commission as part of a framework contract.”
