"Command-control" over R&D to address real problems
"Command-control" over R&D to address real problems
Is today’s R&D innovation focus really addressing our present, most pressing concerns? If not, then how should research institutions and governments go about establishing “command control” over the direction of innovation to elicit the most pertinent solutions?
These questions guided a recent seminar at swissnex Boston on July 29 to 30, 2010. Scholars from Europe, Japan and the USA were gathered by Professors Dominique Foray (EPFL), David Mowery (UC Berkeley) and Richard Nelson (Columbia), eventually to generate papers for the journal Research Policy.
Indeed, this is an era of grand challenges, such as climate change, food shortages, water scarcity and global health crises. In order to cope with these challenges and risks, it is not enough to proceed with the old, “mission-oriented” technology policy rationale and design. The customary neutral allocation of R&D subsidies, tax credit, framework conditions and patent policies, therefore, must be revisited.
It was agreed that randomly increasing the rate of innovation would not suffice. Rather, it is necessary to emphasize the domains and sectors where the centrality of R&D is emerging as a solution to structural problems.
Thus, there is the need to accelerate the rate of advancing knowledge and implementing solutions in certain directions. This hinges on increasing some kind of command-control on the direction of innovation. The difficulty, however, is the risk of imposing predefined technologies, freezing or petrifying competition, and finally dissipating the extraordinary power of a free-market economy. The current system, after all, boosts large numbers of experiments in a decentralized way, allowing innovations to occur universally.
