Figure 1. The Transformative Agenda’s main components
The Transformative Agenda is comprised of three main components (Figure 1): (i) transformative goals for STI to pursue; (ii) key policy orientations to steer STI policy towards transformative change; and (iii) STI policy areas where change is most urgently needed. The Transformative Agenda is also a key starting point for more detailed guidance on the design and reform of STI policies.
Transformative goals and the roles of STI
The Transformative Agenda proposes STI reforms that support three interdependent goals:
• Advancing sustainability transitions, such as transitions from specific industries (e.g., fossil fuels to renewable energy), technologies (e.g., internal combustion to zero emission vehicles), and established models of production and consumption (e.g., from linear to circular economy).
• Promoting inclusive economic renewal, which involves resetting economic models to prioritise accessibility, inclusion and diversity. For example, a ‘just’ green transition should bring social, environmental and economic benefits but also address the unequal starting points of different groups.
• Fostering resilience and security, so that socio-economic systems (e.g., supply chains, energy production systems) can better anticipate, absorb, recover from and adapt to change
AGENDA FOR TRANSFORMATIVE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION POLICIES 5
brought about by the increasing emergence of risks, uncertainty and abrupt shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic.
STI is uniquely positioned to help economies and societies meet these goals. For example, fundamental science provides an important foundation for applied research and the development of future technological and social innovations that support transformation. It is often the case that significant breakthroughs emerge from the accumulation and combination of decades of curiosity-driven research across different sectors and scientific disciplines. Technologies and innovation can also make essential contributions to the acceleration of transformations. STI activities help build the skills and capabilities for industry, government and society to respond effectively to system transformation. They can also help convene and coordinate co-operation between a wide range of actors, including internationally, to achieve the transformative goals.
Achieving the transformative goals often coincides with achieving reforms to address longstanding challenges in STI systems. For example, progress on a range of issues – such as strengthening various linkages in STI systems (e.g. between business and academia, between different parts of government, and between science and society), enhancing the skills and organisational capabilities of multiple actors (e.g. firms, government, civil society), and reducing precarity in research careers – will hasten progress on the transformative goals. Likewise, directing STI systems towards goals like inequality and resilience can facilitate progress on these long-standing issues if transformation-friendly values are embedded in STI policymaking.
Broadly adopting the transformative goals would represent a shift in the orientation of STI policy. While this reorientation could see some continuation of existing STI policy goals and practices, it would also involve important changes, building on and scaling-up experimentation with more directed, inclusive and systemic policy approaches. Reforms might occur through an incremental and evolutionary process, though abrupt changes are also possible in the face of future shocks and discontinuities. Going forwards, and with a view to accelerating the move towards more transformative STI policy goals and practices, there are likely multiple pathways for reorientation, reflecting local conditions. Despite this variety, all pathways should be guided by a common set of ‘STI policy orientations’ for driving transformative change.
Transformative STI policy orientations
The Transformative Agenda identifies six policy orientations that can help point STI policies towards positive transformative change.
1. Direct STI policy to accelerate transformative change. The aim of transformative STI policy is not just to generate innovations as effectively and efficiently as possible, but also to direct them towards meeting chosen goals. There is value to developing STI policy portfolios that are appropriately balanced to target global challenges and sufficiently diverse to contend with the uncertainty of unfolding events and scientific advances. STI policymakers can also prioritise research and innovation activities that will facilitate the maintenance of ‘absorptive capacity’ required to access knowledge and technologies created elsewhere.
2. Embrace shared values in STI policies that align with achieving the transformative goals. Values provide a moral and political basis for the priorities and trade-offs inherent to all science and technology governance decisions. The Transformative Agenda broadens the values that STI policy should embrace, placing greater emphasis on respecting human rights; promoting democratic values, safety and security, and sustainable development; and encouraging equity and inclusion.
6 AGENDA FOR TRANSFORMATIVE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION POLICIES
3. Accelerate both the emergence and diffusion of innovations for transformative change. A mix of emerging and established science, technology and innovation is needed to achieve the transformative goals. Different interventions can be used to support innovations at different phases of this process, with STI policies playing a key role in developing spaces for experimentation and removing technical and regulatory barriers to deployment.
4. Promote the phase out of harmful technologies and related practices that contribute to global problems. Ideally, these efforts would be synchronised with policies to promote the development and diffusion of novel solutions. STI policymakers can contribute to the development of transformative policy portfolios by co-ordinating more closely with policy domains that typically take the lead in deploying phase out policies, including sectoral and horizontal areas with regulatory and fiscal remits.
5. Implement systemic and co-ordinated STI policy responses to global challenges. Transformative policy agendas call on STI policymakers to co-ordinate with other policy domains and across multiple levels of government to tailor interventions to specific sectors and places. Coherent policy portfolios can support STI policymakers in leveraging feedback dynamics and unlocking transformation pathways. Co-ordinating with a diverse set of stakeholders to address global challenges may warrant the cultivation of organisational capabilities to support collective efforts and steward systemic change.
6. Instilgreateragility and experimentation inSTI policy. STI policymakers should take a deliberate and systematic approach to testing new ideas and promoting a culture that encourages risk tolerance and evaluation. They may benefit from utilising agile policymaking processes to prepare for and respond swiftly to emerging circumstances, targeting action to where it is most needed, while discontinuing ineffective activities. In this respect, a diverse range of strategic intelligence capabilities and resources will be important.
In implementing these policy orientations, STI policymakers may need to cultivate novel governance and institutional capacities that differ substantially from those that are currently in place. Other instruments related to funding and collaboration, as well as regulation and guidance, will also play significant roles and may benefit from reappraisal and reform.
AGENDA FOR TRANSFORMATIVE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION POLICIES 7
Translating the policy orientations into policy actions
In translating the policy orientations into concrete actions, policy measures can be directed at specific actions that may be needed to help achieve transformations rather than ‘business-asusual’ outcomes. In this respect, all aspects of STI policy and governance are implicated. While many of the reforms are familiar to the STI policy community, barriers remain, for example, in bridging aspirational strategy with the development and implementation of concrete policy interventions and in scaling-up and institutionalising corresponding policy innovations.
Transformative change is often associated with radical reforms, but the accumulation of small incremental changes may cause a system to shift qualitatively where it is close to a tipping point. In most instances, however, transformation is likely to be a long-term process triggered by several different events that together contribute to a wider shift. Some of these events may be disruptive shocks and discontinuities that policymakers can leverage to enact major structural and institutional reforms to drive transformative change. At the same time, a progressive series of incremental changes in a policy mix can combine into a deeper intervention that disrupts the status quo and creates system-wide change. This perspective lies at the heart of the Transformative Agenda and acknowledges that bringing about a fundamental transformational change in STI will involve changes across many fronts, adapting as lessons are learnt on what does and does not work.
1. The urgency and scale of transformations call for sustained levels of STI investment and greater directionality, agility and co-ordination in funding portfolios.
Governments should consider deploying funding portfolios that include strong support for highrisk high-reward research and the development of breakthrough technology. For example, direct measures, including R&D grants, loans and credits, and public procurement, are superior for supporting breakthrough research and technologies needed for transformations, and, depending on the country, may need to be more prominent in STI policy portfolios.
8 AGENDA FOR TRANSFORMATIVE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION POLICIES
Figure 2. The ten STI policy areas addressed in the Transformative Agenda
Policymakers can also use risk-mitigation tools to help firms cross ‘valleys of death’ at various stages in the innovation chain.
2. Research and technology infrastructures represent long-term strategic investments that have the potential to significantly advance and accelerate transformative change at national and global scales.
Research and technology infrastructures play a variety of roles, such as convening diverse collaborations, generating and stewarding high-quality data, developing and adopting enabling technologies, and delivering education and training. STI policy is well positioned to promote them as ‘system intermediaries’ to support interdisciplinary and intersectoral research and innovation efforts that tackle cross-cutting, multidisciplinary issues. Experimenting with more flexible and inclusive in-kind contribution and access models can promote integrated research and technology infrastructure ecosystems that strengthen the connection of fundamental science to solving complex societal challenges.
3. The emergence, scale-up and deployment of enabling technologies are transforming STI activities, but also pose risks for individuals, societies and the environment.
Enabling technologies have critical roles to play in addressing global challenges. Digital technologies, for example, can accelerate the productivity of research through artificial intelligence and automation in science, and are already accelerating innovations for sustainability transitions, underpinning smart grids and increasing the efficiency of wind and solar farms. Policy makers can do much to accelerate and deepen the uptake of digital technologies in STI. At the same time, transformations that are equitable call for continuous surveillance of evolving interactions between these technologies and society.
4. Current gaps in the skills and organisational capabilities of firms, governments, research actors, and the public prevent them from adopting new ways of working and taking on new roles that will be important for transformative change.
Dynamic capabilities are important to the ability of firms to contribute to and take part in transformations. For example, capabilities to identify and pursue opportunities and adapt to change are fundamental to the ability of firms to develop circular business models. In the public sector, policy that is more directive, experimental, anticipatory, systemic, and inclusive may require policymakers to use skills that are often under-developed, such as operating transversally and with long-term perspectives. Governments can also cultivate a scientific research workforce that is resilient and diverse, for example, by taking steps to improve the diversity of career pathways available to doctoral and postdoctoral researchers and by adapting evaluation frameworks that shape the progression of academic careers.
5. Framework conditions that typically arise outside the immediate remit of STI policy can be important leverage points to promote STI-enabled transformative change.
The rate and direction of innovation is influenced by a range of factors, from the scope of regulation and technical standards to business models, functional labour and capital markets, and geography. For example, carbon pricing changes the relative costs and benefits of carbonintensive technologies, which can lead to the development of new technologies and processes that are more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. Cross-government co-ordination will be key in aligning STI policy measures with other measures to promote their mutual effectiveness.
AGENDA FOR TRANSFORMATIVE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION POLICIES 9
6. Strategic intelligence used to support policy decisions can further evolve to meet the complexity and uncertainty of STI-enabled transformation.
Transformative STI policies demand knowledge and evidence to support direction-setting, experimentation and learning in contexts that are complex, uncertain and, at times, evolving rapidly. Where policy aims to introduce widespread innovation and structural change in response to challenges that are systemic and transdisciplinary in nature, a range of different tools and data can be applied. Governments may also need to cultivate the skills and capabilities that promote the utilisation of strategic intelligence in STI policymaking. Taken together, the production and use of strategic intelligence for transformative change may warrant the implementation of a strategic ‘policies for evidence’ agenda that promotes and co-ordinates supporting activities.
7. STI co-operation between firms, public researchers and governments is crucial to accelerating the development and diffusion of solutions for transformative change but can be challenged by conflicting priorities and perspectives.
The emergence of new value chains and innovation ecosystems that bring together crosssectoral actors with complementary skills can be important drivers of transformation. They can contribute to the development, deployment and scale-up of new technologies, and to a society’s resilience to solve collective problems. Governments can use challenge-based funding and new institutional arrangements, such as collaborative platforms, to foster collaboration targeting transformative change agendas. In doing so, they can promote the emergence of consortia across disciplines or sectors that do not regularly work together to facilitate knowledge (and infrastructure) sharing. Facilitating collaboration between diverse actors will also benefit from innovative approaches to governing STI collaboration.
8. Public engagement in the development of STI activities and policy is an important tool to accelerate the adoption of legitimate and robust STI-based solutions for transformation.
Civil society represents a diverse source of knowledge that can expose neglected issues and improve the comprehension of complexity. STI policymakers and researchers can engage diverse and inclusive perspectives to develop more robust and relevant STI-based solutions. Such efforts would also benefit from the evolution of STI communication practices to cultivate mutual trust and understanding between the public, policymakers and researchers, and to advance mechanisms like citizen science, transdisciplinary research, and participatory technology governance and policymaking.
9. Co-ordination across a range of government departments and agencies, as well as at different levels of governance, can help facilitate transformations
Transformations that promote sustainability, inclusivity and resilience cannot be achieved or, in many cases, even chiefly driven by STI policies, although they are certainly essential. Yet the policy landscape is fragmented, with different government bodies working largely within their own sectors and stages of the innovation chain. Various mechanisms, such as new regulatory models, horizontal and vertical co-ordination bodies, and joint programming, have emerged to improve overall policy coherence. However, they can also lead to high transaction costs, diluted priorities, lack of leadership and blurred accountability. Experimentation with novel governance models will help policymakers overcome these challenges and achieve the necessary levels of comprehensive and substantive co-ordination to achieve the transformative goals.
10 AGENDA FOR TRANSFORMATIVE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION POLICIES
10. Inclusive global STI co-ordination will help create more effective responses to shared challenges like climate change and food security.
While STI activities occur in an interconnected global ecosystem, most public funding for research and innovation is allocated within national boundaries. Governments can align national transformative STI priorities and co-ordinate funding for research and innovation activities to address global challenges. This will help reduce duplication, enhance synergies, and accelerate and maximise the impact of STI activities. Open Science and knowledge sharing efforts will be key to improving global resilience and scaling up efforts to address collective challenges, while also safeguarding national and economic security and protecting freedom of enquiry. In addition, further action to improve the capabilities of low-income countries is warranted to catalyse local transformations and engage as equal partners in global collaboration and decision-making.
Acting on the Transformative Agenda
The Transformative Agenda provides high-level guidance to support policymakers and other relevant stakeholders in formulating and implementing reforms to accelerate and scale-up positive change. With its comprehensive coverage, the Transformative Agenda has multiple entry points to support readers with different roles and responsibilities in applying different key messages to their work. For high-level decision-makers, the implications and interdependencies of the three transformative goals are a critical consideration, as well as what they might mean for future STI mandates. Conversely, policymakers may find applicable insights in sections on specific policy areas, such as international STI relations or skills and capabilities. These sections of the Transformative Agenda will be supplemented by two additional forms of guidance:
• Policy modules that discuss proposed policy actions, potential implementation pathways and challenges posed by the status quo for the Transformative Agenda’s STI policy areas
• Key policy challenge ‘toolkits’ that provide step-by-step, interactive online tools for users to translate policy options into feasible and context-specific actions.
Besides STI policymakers, other users could benefit from the Transformative Agenda and its guidance. Many of the policy areas raise the importance of cross-government coherence and coordination. The Transformative Agenda could be a valuable tool for non-STI policymakers to understand when, how and why to engage more actively with the STI policy domain, and vice versa. Finally, the Transformative Agenda’s policy options are relevant for stakeholders who are active in STI systems, including such as researchers, public research organisations, and industry.
The CSTP will follow-up the Transformative Agenda in its future activities. Related projects will aim to use peer learning methods for countries to exchange on their experiments in formulating, designing and implementing STI policies targeting transformative change. Projects will incorporate co-creation and sense-making processes while codifying insights into improved policy guidance. A new series of OECD innovation policy country reviews on transformative STI policies could also be inaugurated.
AGENDA FOR TRANSFORMATIVE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION POLICIES 11
