Transformative Innovation Policy and SDGs

Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) has become a new major theme in the Innovation Policy discourse. It has been proposed as an alternative framing for innovation policy by ‘people who are desperate to see changes in the current world scene’ to meet the ambitious challenges expressed in the SDGs. While appreciating the importance of S&T in system transformation TIP practitioners believe that technological intervention alone is incapable of resolving systemic challenges such as climate change, inequality, migration etc., hence attempts to bring together social innovation and technical innovation to address systemic challenges. It is generally realized that the predominant tendency to see innovation as promoting economic growth is too narrow, hence the focus on directionality in innovation policy. With inspiration from Dutch STS scholars proponents of transformative innovation policy has applied the Multi-level Perspective (MLP) of Sustainability Transitions with the aim to capture the nature and dynamics of Deep Transitions. Some…