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The Strategy and Research Programs in the Center for Innovation |
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The importance of innovation, both product and service, continues to grow as a function of the steadily increasing expenditures on S&T research. For example, in 2000 constant dollars and adjusted for purchasing power parity, the U.S. went from 200 in 1995 to 268 billion in 2001, Japan from 83 to 103 billion in the same time period, and the combination of Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy from 123 to 149 billion. The E.U. now intends to double the amount of money spent on what they call RTD research in the next seven years. Industrial innovation and especially radical innovation is now perceived to be critical as an engine for economic growth, protection of employment and the standard of living. Beyond this, governments now confront a number of crises such as global warming, terrorism, petroleum prices, pan-epidemics, etc. that frequently necessitate innovative solutions as well. Making the policy task for governments even more complicated is that innovation speed is that the speed in knowledge advances is accelerating and especially in the high technology sectors such as telecommunications, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and automobiles. And the same problem exists in the non-economic sectors concerned with the various crises listed above. Governments need good evaluation models so that they can intervene to correct obstacles and blockages that prevent the rapid development of innovation and especially radical innovation. With these imperatives in mind, the Center for Innovation is consulting with and doing research on science and technology in research organizations with the objective of helping them increase scientific technological advances. The Center is developing theories that concern the process of innovation and the production of knowledge more generally. Finally, it is developing several models and methods for guiding governments in their evaluations of S&T research. The research programs in the Center for Innovation are:
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