Developing science, technology and innovation indicators: what we can learn from the past
Chris Freeman & Luc Soete
#2007-001
The science-technology-innovation system is one that is continuously and
rapidly evolving. The dramatic growth over the last twenty years in the
use of science, technology and innovation (STI) indicators appears first
and foremost the result of a combination between on the one hand the
easiness of computerized access to an increasing number of measures of
STI and on the other hand the interest in a growing number of public
policy and private business circles in such indicators as might be
expected in societies which increasingly use organised science and
technology to achieve a wide variety of social and economic objectives
and in which business competition is increasingly based on innovation.
As highlighted on the basis of 40 years of indicators work, frontiers
and characteristics that were important last century may well no longer
be so relevant today and indeed may even be positively misleading.
UNU-MERIT Working Papers
ISSN 1871-9872