Publications & Documents

Half a century after independence, Bangladesh has achieved impressive progress. The country has transformed from one of the poorest nations into a global textile manufacturing hub capable of meeting its medical needs almost entirely through domestic pharmaceutical production. The country will graduate from the least developed country (LDC) category in 2026 and aspires to be a high-income nation through industrialisation by 2041. Meeting this challenge requires accelerating economic transformation through diversification and innovation. This Production Transformation Policy Review (PTPR), implemented with the support and collaboration of the European Union (EU), and in partnership with the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), identifies concrete options for supporting Bangladesh’s development. It calls for leveraging digitalisation to address persistent fragilities and it advocates for a new pact based on shared responsibilities between the national government, the private sector and international partners to shift to a new development phase and ensure sustainable, smooth and irreversible graduation.

This working paper discusses strategic foresight initiatives and methodologies that support decision making and process design. It highlights case studies, international benchmarks, and best practices, as well as methodological recommendations and options for promoting the adoption and use of strategic foresight in government. The paper has four sections, each centred on a critical action to improve decision making through strategic foresight: (i) framing strategic foresight, (ii) building its fundamental components in governments, (iii) fine-tuning foresight interventions to specific contexts, and (iv) undertaking concrete activities to solve specific policy challenges. Given its exploratory nature, this working paper and its proposals should be seen as contributing to ongoing debates about the use of strategic foresight for decision making in government. The ultimate purpose of this paper is to help governments become more proactive and prospective.

This report explores how governments in Latin America and the Caribbean can use digital technology and data to foster responsiveness, resilience and proactiveness in the public sector. This report looks at governance frameworks, digital government capabilities, data-driven public sector, public service design and delivery, and digital innovation in the public sector. It identifies trends, challenges, strengths, and opportunities for cross-border collaboration and provides policy recommendations to achieve an efficient and sustainable digital transformation of governments across the region.

This report analyses the career options of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. It identifies policies and practices to promote diverse careers, flexible career trajectories and ultimately better-quality research and innovation across different economic and social sectors. The report presents a conceptual framework and synthesis of available data and policy information. It offers recommendations and a set of policy options to: promote engagement and interaction with employers outside academia; provide researchers with experience and skills for diverse careers; encourage valorisation of diverse career options; support career development and guidance for researchers; promote inter-sectoral mobility; and, reconfigure and support careers in academia.

Measuring innovation in education and understanding its drivers and obstacles is essential to improve the quality of the education sector – and of specific educational establishments. Are pedagogical and administrative practices changing in the expected direction? Do educational institution have a positive innovation culture that supports innovation? What are the drivers of innovation that policy makers or institution leaders could influence to achieve the systems’ educational objectives? How much do countries invest in educational research? This book proposes insights and tools to policy makers and education leaders willing to drive change based on data and evidence and new tools and methodologies for education policy makers and institution leaders to answer those questions. Based on the research literature and the long experience of innovation and research surveys, these tools are meant either for a statistical collection or to engage in self-reflection at the institutional level. Three aspects of innovation are covered: educational innovation at the system level, innovation culture within educational institutions, innovation towards equity in education. A questionnaire to measure educational research and experimental development expenditures and implementation and new methodologies to measure certain aspects of educational innovation and educational research based on big data and bibliometrics are also presented.

The impact of productivity on employment remains uncertain, particularly in light of growing concerns regarding potential negative effects of technological progress on labour demand. This report uses harmonised and comparable data from 13 countries spanning the last two decades to comprehensively analyse how productivity growth affects employment dynamics at various levels of aggregation. The study's findings highlight a positive correlation between productivity growth and employment as well as wage growth, both at the firm level and on a broader scale. This outcome arises from counteracting mechanisms and heterogeneous dynamics across different groups of firms. The findings have relevant policy implications: productivity is not just an isolated key economic objective, but well-designed and complementary policies can also help convert technological and organisational change into higher employment and wage growth.

The 'Miracle on the River Han' catapulted Korea from developing country to a prosperous economy, driven in part by advancements in science, technology, and innovation. Being the second-highest R&D spender among OECD economies, Korea excels in key technologies, including semiconductors, 6G, and ICT infrastructure. Despite this remarkable progress, disparities remain between SMEs and chaebols, manufacturing and services, ICT and non-ICT industries, and urban and rural areas. Korea also grapples with societal and economic vulnerabilities, including an aging population, a significant carbon footprint, limited renewable energy use, and pronounced gender inequality. To further seize opportunities for equitable and inclusive growth, Korea must foster a shared national vision to develop science, technology, and innovation to address societal issues, enhance R&D policy implementation, promote excellent research, further internationalise, and broaden technology diffusion.

Tax incentives such as intellectual property regimes provide for reduced taxation of the income derived from research, development, and innovation related activities. By doing so, they lower the overall tax burden from investing in certain qualified intangible assets. This paper proposes a methodology to build indicators comparing the effect of income-based tax incentives for R&D and innovation on firms’ incentives to make R&D intangible investments. It provides insights into how such incentives affect firms’ decisions on whether, where and how much to invest in R&D intangibles. These indicators are used to illustrate the extent to which these tax incentives may create potential distortions to firms’ investment, protection and commercialisation decisions. The model is further developed to account for the design changes to such tax incentives introduced by the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting minimum standard.

Governments are increasingly utilising research and innovation (R&I) policy to foster economic and societal change. Yet, the empirical correlation between these policies and socio-technical transformations remains under-explored. The report investigates this relationship by comparing the Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRPs) of Austria, Finland and Sweden, initiated under the NextGenerationEU framework post Covid-19. The report finds significant disparities in the content, process and transformative value of the RRPs among these countries. The differences in the content of the national RRPs, and the ability and willingness to seize the opportunity presented by the RRPs to drive transformation, are explained by existing national policy contexts and frameworks. Surprisingly, the role of R&I policy in the RRPs is less important than expected, despite its emphasised importance in literature and political rhetoric. The report further identifies implications for a transformative innovation policy as well as areas for further research.

This is the last in a series of three reports that explore how science was mobilised in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report focuses on system-level issues and highlights challenges and opportunities that are inherent to the organisation of science systems and that need to be addressed to improve the resilience of these systems and their capacity to address complex societal challenges and crises. The analysis is structured around five interconnected themes: the strategic mobilisation of science capacity; managing conflicting priorities; co-ordination and collaboration across levels of governance; transdisciplinary and reflexive science; and dynamic and system-oriented governance. Key areas for intervention and more specific policy actions are identified under each theme and provide a framework for systemic action to strengthen science in support of socio-technological transitions.