Science Technology And Innovation

Science, Technology and Innovation in Chile

We are facing unprecedented challenges today. For many of us, innovation would be our last hope. But how can it be done? Is it enough to bet on the scientific culture? How can technical culture contribute to innovation? How is technical culture situated with regards to what we name collectively the culture of innovation? It is these questions that this book intends to address.

Explorations of science, technology, and innovation in Africa not as the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere but as the working of African knowledge. In the STI literature, Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science, technology, and innovation rather than a maker of them. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines show that STI in Africa is not merely the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere but the working of African knowledge. Their contributions focus on African ways of looking, meaning-making, and creating. The chapter authors see Africans as intellectual agents whose perspectives constitute authoritative knowledge and whose strategic deployment of both endogenous and inbound things represents an African-centered notion of STI. “Things do not (always) mean the same from everywhere,” observes Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, the volume's editor. Western, colonialist definitions of STI are not universalizable. The contributors discuss topics that include the trivialization of indigenous knowledge under colonialism; the creative labor of chimurenga, the transformation of everyday surroundings into military infrastructure; the role of enslaved Africans in America as innovators and synthesizers; the African ethos of “fixing”; the constitutive appropriation that makes mobile technologies African; and an African innovation strategy that builds on domestic capacities. The contributions describe an Africa that is creative, technological, and scientific, showing that African STI is the latest iteration of a long process of accumulative, multicultural knowledge production. Contributors Geri Augusto, Shadreck Chirikure, Chux Daniels, Ron Eglash, Ellen Foster, Garrick E. Louis, D. A. Masolo, Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Neda Nazemi, Toluwalogo Odumosu, Katrien Pype, Scott Remer

​Decision-makers at all levels are being confronted with novel complexities and uncertainties and face long-term challenges which require foresight about long-term future prospects, assumptions, and strategies. This book explores how foresight studies can be systematically undertaken and used in this context. It explicates why and how methods like horizon scanning, scenario planning, and roadmapping should be applied when dealing with high levels of uncertainty. The scope of the book moves beyond “narrow” technology foresight, towards addressing systemic interrelations between social, technological, economic, environmental, and political systems. Applications of foresight tools to such fields as energy, cities, health, transportation, education, and sustainability are considered as well as enabling technologies including nano-, bio-, and information technologies and cognitive sciences. The approaches will be illustrated with specific actual cases.

This book outlines a number of different perspectives on the relationship between science, technology, and innovation in emerging economies. In it, the authors explore the aforementioned relationship as a pillar of economic development, driving growth in emerging economies. Employing a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach, the authors work to determine the main related factors and outcomes of the relationship between science, technology, and innovation, ultimately seeking to guide public policies to enhance the welfare of the population of an emerging economy.

This book examines the implementation of science, technology and innovation (STI) policy in eight Latin American countries and the different paths these policies have taken. It provides empirical evidence to examine the extent to which STI policies are contributing to the development of the region, as well as to the solution of market failures and the stimulus of the region’s innovation systems. Since the pioneering work of Solow (1957), it has been recognized that innovation is critical for economic growth both in developed and in less-developed countries. Unfortunately Latin America lags behind world trends, and although over the last 20 years the region has established a more stable and certain macroeconomic regime, it is also clear that these changes have not been enough to trigger a process of innovation and productivity to catch-up. Against this rather grim scenario there is some optimism emerging throughout the region. After many years of inaction the region has begun to invest in science, technology and engineering once again. Furthermore, after many changes in innovation policy frameworks, there is now an emerging consensus on the need for a solution to coordination failures that hinder the interaction between supply and demand. Offering an informative and analytic insight into STI policymaking within Latin America, this book can be used by students, researchers and practitioners who are interested in the design and implementation of innovation policies. This book also intends to encourage discussion and collaboration amongst current policy makers within the region.

Canadian Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy presents new critical analysis about related developments in the field such as significantly changed concepts of peer review, merit review, the emergence of big data in the digital age, and the rise of an economy and society dominated by the internet and information. The authors scrutinize the different ways in which federal and provincial policies have impacted both levels of government, including how such policies impact on Canada’s natural resources. They also study key government departments and agencies involved with science, technology, and innovation to show how these organizations function increasingly in networks and partnerships, as Canada seeks to keep up and lead in a highly competitive global system. The book also looks at numerous realms of technology across Canada in universities, business, and government and various efforts to analyze biotechnology, genomics, and the Internet, as well as earlier technologies such as nuclear reactors, and satellite technology. The authors assess whether a science-and-technology-centred innovation economy and society has been established in Canada – one that achieves a balance between commercial and social objectives, including the delivery of public goods and supporting values related to redistribution, fairness, and community and citizen empowerment. Probing the nature of science advice across prime ministerial eras, including recent concerns over the Harper government’s claimed muzzling of scientists in an age of attack politics, Canadian Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy provides essential information for academics and practitioners in business and government in this crucial and complex field.

This report examines digitalisation’s effects on science, technology and innovation and the associated consequences for policy. In varied and far-reaching ways, digital technologies are changing how scientists work, collaborate and publish.