About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

After little government focus and spend 30 years ago, innovation policy is now a primary mechanism used by countries to tackle challenges as specific as university-industry collaborations, and as large as inequality and climate change.

Innovation policymakers now control huge budgets and are tasked with spending efficiently and strategically in order to make the lives of citizens better. Overall government spend averages 40% of GDP in OECD countries, and Nesta estimates Europe alone spends more than €152 billion on the ‘business support’ element of innovation policy alone. This is a huge responsibility and raises a crucial question: are governments equipping policymakers with the right skills and tools to have the desired impact?

Innovation policymakers design, implement and evaluate complex programmes. They have to build political support, collaborate, engage with stakeholders, navigate budget restrictions, consider public opinion, manage competing interests, and much more. This isn’t easy.

Innovation policymakers are diverse - in the sense that they come from many different disciplinary backgrounds - and are influenced by a range of different factors that are rarely acknowledged. Having a deep understanding of this world is essential if governments are to support policymakers effectively in executing their important role in economic and social development.

Through the Global Innovation Policy Accelerator programme, we seek to have a deep understanding of the world of innovation policymakers; their context, needs, challenges, and activities. We take a broad view of who constitutes as an innovation policymaker to include public officials tasked with the design of policy, as well as those leading the implementation of programmes to better support innovation. By developing a deep understanding of innovation policymakers’ needs and the systems they operate in, we are able to help them develop innovation policies that are smarter, more inclusive, and fit for the future.

We’ve been working with policymakers across Latin America, India, South East Asia, and Brazil, with Egypt, Kenya, Jordan, Turkey, and South Africa soon to join our network. Through our work, we’ve learned a lot about the innovation policy systems in these countries and we’ll be publishing country reports about all of them, beginning with India.

In these reports, we will highlight what we’ve learned about the challenges and needs of innovation policymakers working in these systems, most of which we’ve learnt through direct conversations with innovation policymakers working in these same systems.

Here, we provide a synthesis of a more detailed report on India that you can download in full. It is the culmination of many conversations and interviews with different actors in the Indian innovation system, conducted over a year. These discussions involved innovation policymakers across national and regional government departments. This article has quotes from those conversations that we have kept anonymous. We'd like to thank everyone who contributed to the insights that follow.

Authors

Juan Casasbuenas

Juan Casasbuenas

Juan Casasbuenas

Curriculum and Content Manager

Juan was a Curriculum and Content Manager supporting the Digital Frontrunners and Global Innovation Policy Accelerator programmes.

View profile
Anna Schlimm

Anna Schlimm

Anna Schlimm

Learning Experience Designer, Global Innovation Policy Accelerator

Anna was a Learning Experience Designer for the Global Innovation Policy Accelerator.

View profile
Paulina Gonzalez-Ortega

Paulina Gonzalez-Ortega

Paulina Gonzalez-Ortega

Design Lead, International Innovation

Paulina was the Design Lead for the Global Innovation Policy Accelerator, a 14-country collaborative development programme for senior innovation policymakers.

View profile
Florence Engasser

Florence Engasser

Florence Engasser

Senior Foresight Analyst

Florence was a senior foresight analyst within Nesta’s Discovery Hub, which aims to create a link between Nesta’s current portfolio and our pipeline of future work.

View profile
Nathan Kably

Nathan Kably

Nathan Kably

Senior Strategy Analyst

Nathan worked on the design and delivery of Nesta's strategy

View profile