Political leaders around the globe have invested heavily in the importance of science, technology and innovation to deliver their national growth strategies. Their policy statements and ambitions are rich in rhetoric but often struggle with the detail of policy definition, resource allocation and intervention management to make this a reality. And many of these ambitions are moderated by the global battle around assets, resources and funding because this is not a level playing field. But one of the biggest challenges faced in turning the rhetoric into reality is the lack of understanding of how innovations are translated to deliver impact. Unfortunately there has been very little hard thinking over the last decade in trying to understand how commercialisation actually happens.
As Mazzucato & Jacobs note in their introduction to the series of essays on Rethinking Capitalism, there are three key challenges which need to be addressed:
· The need for a richer characterisation of markets and the businesses within them
· The requirement for ‘a much more dynamic and accurate understanding of how innovation occurs'
· Recognition of the role of the public sector in the innovation process
To tackle this Commercialisation Challenge, the R&D Society (RDS) Thinktank is
collaborating with the Triple Chasm Company Scale-up Growth | Triple Chasm Model (thetriplechasm.com) to harness their approach to create better insights and guidance which can be
applied to tackle the 3 tiered challenges around growth: Policy definition;
Resource Allocation; and Intervention Management.