Latest Documents

The importance of knowledge co-creation – the joint production of innovation between industry, research and possibly other stakeholders, such as civil society – has been increasingly acknowledged. This paper builds on 13 cross-country case studies and co-creation experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic to characterise the diversity of knowledge co-creation initiatives and identify lessons for policy. The paper identifies a strong rationale for policy to support knowledge co-creation because the benefits of successful co-creation initiatives outweigh the initial co-ordination costs. Moreover, knowledge co-creation initiatives can contribute to democratising innovation. Successful initiatives engage all stakeholders and have effective governance and management structures. They also have clearly defined ownership and use rights of the collaborations’ outcomes and benefit from favourable conditions to operate, including temporary staff mobility and institutional set-ups that facilitate collaboration and effective communication among participants.

This report analyses academic research careers, with a focus on the 'research precariat', defined as postdoctoral researchers holding fixed-term positions without permanent or continuous employment prospects. It identifies policies and practices that aim to improve researchers’ well-being, develop more diverse, equitable and inclusive research systems, attract and retain the best talent in academia, and ultimately improve the quality of science. The report presents a conceptual framework and synthesis of available data and policy information. It draws on a survey of OECD countries that included country notes and interviews with policy officials, funders, representatives of research performing organisations and researchers. It offers recommendations and a set of policy options to improve working conditions and professional development, better link funding to human resource policies, make governance more inclusive, promote equal opportunities and diversity, improve human resource management, promote inter-sectoral and international mobility, and develop the evidence base on research careers.

This report analyses policies and research funding mechanisms designed to foster high-risk high-reward (HRHR) research, and explores promising practices for fostering HRHR research in a variety of contexts. The underlying concern is that failure to encourage and support research on risky, ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas may jeopardise a country’s longer-term ability to compete economically, harness science for solving national and global challenges, and contribute to the progress of science as a whole. The analysis in this paper is primarily based on a survey of individual HRHR research funding schemes in different countries, complemented by targeted interviews. This survey was supplemented by an analysis of HRHR research-oriented programmes and by the feedback from an international workshop that included all relevant stakeholders.

As the United Nations Decade on Ocean Science for Sustainable Development begins, this paper explores recent and likely future digital technologies - especially in the field of ocean observation - that will contribute to ocean sustainability. It examines advances that could lead to substantial improvements in the data collection and analysis of the impact of climate change and human activity on marine ecosystems, while also contributing to the monitoring and reduction of the ecological footprint of ocean-related economic activity. The paper also provides preliminary reflections on how the COVID-19 pandemic might affect digitalisation in the ocean economy, and what strategies could help support ocean research and innovation during and after the crisis.

The COVID-19 crisis may bring lasting socioeconomic changes, also affecting science, technology and innovation (STI). This paper discusses the effects that the COVID-19 crisis could have on the future of STI and its policies, building on lessons learned from past crises, an analysis of diverse sources of early data and insights from expert discussions in international policy fora. Factors shaping the future of STI include the unequal effects of the crisis on R&D spending across sectors, the accelerated adoption of digital tools and techniques, and changes in the openness and inclusiveness of research and innovation ecosystems. The paper also explores how STI policy could experience fundamental changes as resilience, environmental sustainability and inclusiveness become more prominent objectives on policy agendas. This includes experimentation with new data and digital tools for policy purposes and unconventional policy approaches, which could spur the adoption of new and more effective STI policies.

This report assesses the potential for mission-oriented innovation policies (MOIPs) to contribute to the sustainable transition in Japan, and examines the challenges and opportunities that MOIPs would present. As part of a series of MOIP national case studies, the report finds that the ongoing ambitious and top-down MOIPs led by the center-of-government build upon a long history of proactive and goal-oriented policy intervention. MOIPs in Japan are the latest step of decades of efforts to reduce the fragmentation and lack of holistic coordination of Japan’s science, technology and innovation policy in order to proactively address societal challenges. Available evaluations of these policies demonstrate very encouraging results in that regards. The study concludes with recommendations to pursue these efforts, including by mainstreaming these policy initiatives across the government structure and complementing them with more bottom-up challenge-based initiatives.

Sustainably managing the ocean requires reliable measures of the ocean’s contributions to society and the effects that human activities have on the marine environment. This paper informs current international discussions on the measurement of ocean economic activities. It summarises the extent to which the ocean is crucial to society, outlines national approaches to measuring ocean economies, establishes an OECD definition of ocean economic activities for statistical purposes, and introduces a plan to improve international ocean economy statistics through the pragmatic development of satellite accounts. By measuring the full range of ocean economic activities, this framework will improve evidence on ocean sustainability and lay the foundations for ocean accounts that include economic-environmental linkages.

Science, technology and innovation (STI) have played a key role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented socio-economic crisis it has triggered. This paper explores how the pandemic affected STI in 2020, including how STI was mobilised to provide vaccines, treatments and innovative (often digital) solutions to address 'social distancing'. The paper also reviews the quick and agile STI policy responses implemented across countries to stimulate research and innovation activities to find solutions to the pandemic. Moreover, the paper covers STI policies that targeted universities, research centres, innovative businesses and entrepreneurs most affected by the crisis. It also raises key debates on the effectiveness of such policies. Follow-up work will leverage more and better data to improve this early assessment of the impacts of the crisis and STI policy responses.