ABSTRACT
Introduction: the need for multi-level innovation policy Over the last two decades, the world has witnessed a proliferation of innovation strategies. Innovation policy has emerged as a distinct area offering a portfolio of instruments to achieve socio-economic goals ranging from raising productivity, to rejuvenating economic regions, through to advancements in environmental, defence and health-related fields. The rise of innovation policy as a distinct policy domain has been the direct result of the popularisation of the concept of a ‘knowledge based economy’, wherein economies derive competitive advantage through their generation and exploitation of innovations. As a consequence, governments around the world have drafted ambitious plans to spur innovation in their respective economies, pursuing distinct objectives in information and communications technology (ICT), education, infrastructure, finance, and other areas that enable innovation to occur. The ultimate aim of innovation policy is to foster innovation by removing the obstacles that could otherwise hinder its ability to flourish. Innovation policies are, therefore, instruments of government intervention that effectively solve two ‘problems’. First, broad socio-economic challenges such as economic growth, and second, barriers and constraints to achieving specific socio-economic goals. For example, an innovation policy instrument that targets the lack of venture capital by making funds available for potential innovators, aims to remove a barrier, which in this case is the lack of funds as well as spurring innovation. This instrument is thus based on an assumption that there is a link between the provision of funds and innovation activity, whereby the lack of the former results in a dearth of the latter.
