An Assessment of Government Innovation Policies

While governments in the advanced market economies have for many years been involved in stimulating scientific and technological progress within the scientific and technological infrastructure, and in assisting technological developments in industry, it was, in most cases, not until the late 1970s that they began to formulate and implement explicit innovation policies. This represented an important step forward since it constituted a formal recognition that it is not science or technology per se that enhances competitiveness and stimulates economic growth, but rather the transformation into economic use of the results of scientific and technological advance. In other words, it acknowledges that industrial innovation is a process of matching technological opportunities to market needs, the innovating firm being the point of confluence between the two.