UN-wide Capacity Building Workshop on Technology for Development: Innovation Policies for SDGs in the Arab Region
Prof. Anthony Arundel, Prof. Shyama Ramani, Dr. Ludovico Alcorta et al., UNU-MERIT et al
In the framework of the Work Stream 6 (WS6) of the UN-Inter-Agency Task Team on Science, Technology and Innovation (IATT-STI), UNU-MERIT and the UN Economic Commission for Western Asia (ECWA) co-organised a capacity building workshop on Innovation Policies for SDGs, in Amman between 15-19 April 2018.
Top-level experts from United Nations entities including UNU-MERIT and ESCWA, as well as the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) collaborated to deliver this workshop.
The workshop focused on:
- The systemic nature of innovation and innovation policy;
- Various components of an innovation policy, especially the distinction between financial and non-financial instruments and their impacts;
- Importance of policies for increasing the supply of technically trained human resources for R&D and other innovation activities;
- Collection and presentation of conventional indicators, which can be used to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of specific instruments of innovation policies;
- New innovation indicators, such as community innovation surveys, while understanding the limitations of replicating such efforts in developing countries; and
- Integration of evaluation into the actual design of innovation policies.
Date: 15-19 April 2018
