Co-designing sustainability-oriented innovation policy: experiences, instruments and solutions (COSU)
Schedule: 2021–2023
A joint project between VTT and the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
CHALLENGE
- Innovation policy needs to incorporate new objectives and rationales to address urgent sustainability challenges.
- Policymakers need to translate new innovation policy ideas and justifications into concrete policies.
- Approaches to address conflicts and trade-offs between traditional economic growth aims and sustainable development goals are lacking.
PROJECT ACTION
- This project explores policy premises and instruments to address the needs of social and environmental sustainability in innovation policy design.
OUTCOMES
- Creates knowledge of the tensions between different rationales of sustainability-oriented innovation policies from the perspective of different stakeholders
- Develops and co-creates socially acceptable practical solutions to bridge between differing standpoints
- Provides guidelines on how sustainability-oriented innovation policy can be systematically implemented to facilitate a long-term path towards a sustainable economy in Finland.
Background
Addressing global sustainability challenges, such as climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), requires changes in innovation policy. Hence, it is necessary to promote the development, deployment, and diffusion of innovative solutions in companies and policymaking. Companies need to develop and utilize new methods to meet the various objectives. Policymakers, hence, need to develop an innovation environment that stimulates companies to develop innovations with positive social and environmental impacts, in addition to economic outcomes. There are several challenges that policymakers face in this task. These challenges arise from new requirements for policymakers as their role widens as well as the tensions between traditional growth-oriented innovation policies and new sustainability-related goals.
The COSU project aims to support the creation of an innovation environment that promotes holistic sustainability. The project systematically reviews existing policy instruments and stakeholder experiences, which helps to identify and overcome the incoherencies (e.g. overlaps, gaps, conflicting aims) within existing innovation policies that hamper long-term sustainability goals. It helps create an innovation environment that encourages companies and research organizations for ambitious and impactful innovation collaboration for balanced sustainability between the social, environmental, economic objectives. The engagement of a wide range of stakeholders to co-create novel innovation policy solutions supports the dialogue between companies, policymakers, research organizations, educational institutes and funding bodies and strengthens the acceptability of new innovation policy approaches. In addition, we will provide guidelines on how sustainability-oriented innovation policy can be systematically implemented to facilitate a long-term path towards a sustainable economy in Finland.
Project structure
The project is divided into six work packages (WPs). The WPs cover taking stock of the existing knowledge base on the topic (WP1), understanding the Finnish context (WP2), elaborating the company viewpoint (WP3), co-designing sustainability-oriented innovation policy (WP4), interaction and dissemination of the results (WP5) and project management (WP6). Our WPs are highly integrated (see Figure 1). As a general principle, the WPs address complementary viewpoints that build on each other. WPs 1–3 generate individual WP-specific outcomes and provide inputs to WP4, where the results are further co-developed with key stakeholders.
